Waldo's Weekly - Carving Our Way to M3E

[yool1981]

Speaking of Streamlining why not defining some common abilities such as Terrifying in the rulebook?

This makes the card unnecessarily text heavy imho.

I understand this may help game play, especially for new players, but a reference card may be enough, as there are already ones for actions and conditions.

[Mason]

4 minutes ago, yool1981 said:

Speaking of Streamlining why not defining some common abilities such as Terrifying in the rulebook?

This makes the card unnecessarily text heavy imho.

I understand this may help game play, especially for new players, but a reference card may be enough, as there are already ones for actions and conditions.

M1E did this, and with the transition to M2E, people were generally in favor of moving the information onto the cards so that they didn't have to play with a rulebook open beside them.

[Durza]

I'd rather the text stay on the cards, I don't remember the last time I had to open the rulebook to actually check a rule.

[Bakuriel]

1 hour ago, Durza said:

I'd rather the text stay on the cards, I don't remember the last time I had to open the rulebook to actually check a rule.

I do. I was playing 40k and the game took almost 4 hours because of the constant checking. Totally in favor of keeping the complicated stuff on the cards with minimal book flipping.

[yool1981]

3 hours ago, Mason said:

M1E did this, and with the transition to M2E, people were generally in favor of moving the information onto the cards so that they didn't have to play with a rulebook open beside them.

Ah Ok. I guess I am in the minority then.

I’d rather have a reference card (such as the one that was shown at Gencon for conditions and actions or even bigger ones of the size of a leaflet ala seven wonders) to avoid referring to the rulebook and lighter text on the cards for very common abilities (hard to kill, terrifying, unimpeded, incorporeal, flight...).

I think it makes cards easier to apprehend and less scary for new players.

It also makes errata much easier to handle.

[Adran]

24 minutes ago, yool1981 said:

 

I think it makes cards easier to apprehend and less scary for new players.

It also makes errata much easier to handle.

There was certainly more questions on the forums about common abilities when the text wasn't on the card. ( or at least questions that really could be resolved by actually reading what the rules said. It looks like conditions will want that reference card, as they don't appear to be defined on the cards. So we are in the middle ground. 

[solkan]

57 minutes ago, yool1981 said:

Ah Ok. I guess I am in the minority then.

I’d rather have a reference card (such as the one that was shown at Gencon for conditions and actions or even bigger ones of the size of a leaflet ala seven wonders) to avoid referring to the rulebook and lighter text on the cards for very common abilities (hard to kill, terrifying, unimpeded, incorporeal, flight...).

I think it makes cards easier to apprehend and less scary for new players.

The demonstration that that’s not the case:  Infinity and Warmachine/Hordes.  

Putting keywords without explanations on the cards (abilities without definitions) doesn’t make it easier for new players.  It creates a barrier to entry where you have these extra abilities that you must memorize in order to proceed.

Really, the more important thing that putting all of those common abilities on the cards is that it forces the rules for those common abilities to be -simple-.

There’s an ability in Warmachine/Hordes called Gunfighter, it lets models use their guns in melee.  The rules for the ability are three paragraphs long, contain about six different rule points, and there are still common questions about its interactions with the rules.

Let me get out my Malifaux 1.5 rulebook and look up Flight.  What do I see?  Three paragraphs.

Because the Ability didn’t have to fit on the card.

 

[Thedeadclaw]

3 hours ago, yool1981 said:

I think it makes cards easier to apprehend and less scary for new players.

It also makes errata much easier to handle.

Honestly I would have been much more intimidated when starting if I had to look up all the standard abilities any time they came up, and it would have lead to me ignoring huge chunks of models abilities because I forgot they were there.

[yool1981]

11 hours ago, solkan said:

The demonstration that that’s not the case:  Infinity and Warmachine/Hordes.  

I don’t know about Infinity but I have played Warmahordes extensively from the start to the end of Mk2 and I found the standard abilities to be very useful.

I don’t remember Mk2 Gunfighter to be as long as you say. Perhaps it is a bad memory on my side or a change in the last Mk3 edition .

For example, Pathfinder that is the equivalent of Unimpeded is just an icon on the card. As it works very simply (you ignore severe terrain when you move) and is very common on cards I prefer to have it in the rule book.

9 hours ago, Thedeadclaw said:

Honestly I would have been much more intimidated when starting if I had to look up all the standard abilities any time they came up, and it would have lead to me ignoring huge chunks of models abilities because I forgot they were there.

I understand.

On my side I prefer to see just a few words of common abilities so that I immediately know what the specific abilities of the model are. I find it easier to apprehend but I understand I am in the minority.

[rober695]

So....are we all just going to ignore the last sentence that hints that effigies can be grown somehow into a fkn emissary?!?

[Ludvig]

7 hours ago, rober695 said:

So....are we all just going to ignore the last sentence that hints that effigies can be grown somehow into a fkn emissary?!?

That is exactly what happens in the stories and a pretty smart way of bringing back the old avatar rules without needing 40 new profiles in the game so that sounds like a promising change to me. I've been loathe to run the emissary and effigy in the same list since they are the same entity, it would be like running a warcaster and their epic version in the same warmahordes list.

[Jesy Blue]

On 11/3/2018 at 11:28 PM, rober695 said:

So....are we all just going to ignore the last sentence that hints that effigies can be grown somehow into a fkn emissary?!?

I have never used any effigy.

While I find the Hodgepodge Emissary fun to put Von Schill's shirt back on or give The Monkey's Paw to Big Jake, i don't feel i get enough value for the point cost; maybe getting the effigy just to evolve that Pokemon would be of value to me?

The Shadow Emissary not only looks really amazing but gets so much value, it is so good it might need to cost more (I'm really excited to see how it will work with Youko!); geting it cheaper a turn or 2 later might be criminal.

The downside of this would be that you would evolve/summon the Emissary without the master specific upgrade, which is usually why you take the Emissary. How would you get around that?

[Ludvig]

You could just add something about it always attaching an upgrade of a certain type when it is summoned. Not sure it will keep the master specific upgrades or how similar the rules will be since I'm not in the beta, it could work very differently in m3e. 

[Adran]

There is nothing to stop the evolution attaching an upgrade to it if they want it to. 

 

(Edit- Ninja'd quite badly. This is what small children do to reaction times)

[lusciousmccabe]

24 minutes ago, Adran said:

There is nothing to stop the evolution attaching an upgrade to it if they want it to. 

Just be careful you have enough gym badges to control it at its new power level.

 

[SoylentRobot]

what if the Effigy could take the master upgrade too...

[katadder]

what if there is no master upgrade this edition? all thoughts of that are based off 2e and I know they said they want less upgrades this edition (which is bad as it takes away list customisation, which pandora will I face out of a possible 3? etc)

[yool1981]

1 hour ago, katadder said:

what if there is no master upgrade this edition? all thoughts of that are based off 2e and I know they said they want less upgrades this edition (which is bad as it takes away list customisation, which pandora will I face out of a possible 3? etc)

Less upgrades may not be such a bad thing.

Emissary upgrades were sometimes more or less successful fix attempts to some masters. I do not think this is a coincidence they appeared in the 0SS errata upgrade book.

Generic faction model upgrades were plentiful in theory but the competitive variety was in practice limited.

Masters upgrades included staple upgrades, situational upgrades and straight unuseful upgrades.

So all in all, less upgrades but homogeneous usefulness seems a good choice imho.

[Clockwork_Fish]

On 11/2/2018 at 4:44 PM, solkan said:

The demonstration that that’s not the case:  Infinity and Warmachine/Hordes.  

Putting keywords without explanations on the cards (abilities without definitions) doesn’t make it easier for new players.  It creates a barrier to entry where you have these extra abilities that you must memorize in order to proceed.

Really, the more important thing that putting all of those common abilities on the cards is that it forces the rules for those common abilities to be -simple-.

 

To play devil’s advocate, I have spoken with Infinity players who have told me that Malifaux is too complicated.

The logic is that while yes, Infinity has a lot of rules, they are common to all factions.  Once you get over the admittedly steep learning curve, you’re good to go, you can figure out what ever model is about.  Indeed, the faction that gets the most grief from players is Tohaa on account of having unique rules that essentially break commonly shared game mechanics.  Oh, mighty SymbioMate, we put our faith in thee...😇

[Bakuriel]

Different strokes for different folks. Honestly I like where things appear to be going, and while I enjoy complexity, it's a matter of where it fits and how it's executed. I haven't played infinity, but I could probably enjoy it alongside malifaux for some very different reasons. Thus I'll be reserving judgment until everything is out in the field. Theory is never as powerful as practice, and something I like now might not work very well when applied, and vice versa.