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DMH concerns/solution.


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While it sounds a reasonable idea, I'm still yet to be convinced DMH are anymore bonkers-good than whats in the normal game (I reckon Von Schtook and Kirai are up there) and would be strongly hesitant to put any form of restrictions on them until much later to see if any problems arise.

Rather than limiting DMH, I'd rather see no double (or more!) masters as a whole in the events I take part in if that is what's needed rather than ban DMH.

Ps. Note, this has absolutely nothing to do with me playing the Nekima/Lilith combo... I swear! :P Playing that is part of what makes me think (that combo anyway) isn't OTT

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Perhaps this is a subject for its own thread, but I'd like to mention that as a returning player (and former Henchman) who can't find a Malifaux community left standing in my entire state, the decision to allow dual-master crews in M3E is equal parts incredibly baffling and disappointing. 

Malifaux has had a problem with some Masters being a NPE virtually by design since the games inception, causing Wyrd to massively overhaul Masters from Dreamer to Pandora to Hamelin as editions have ticked past in order to try to soften that impact. In part, this is because Wyrd/Malifaux is a game that embraces denial to a degree many other such designers/games go well out of their way to avoid.  Just for those reasons, it's shocking that Wyrd opted to allow what seems at face value to be a mechanic that throws the door wide open to TFG/NPE/degenerate play.

As someone looking at having to rebuild some semblance of a community from scratch, it's disappointing to think I'm going to have to soft ban something in a brand new edition or risk TFG/NPE powergamers undoing my efforts by driving away newer players. I can't fathom how this made it thru the Beta without significant pushback.

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37 minutes ago, Jesy Blue said:

What does TFG & NPE mean?

TFG: "That F@@king Guy".   Generally players that want to win at the cost of literally everything else.  Often deeply unfun to play against because of bad behavior (pedantic rules lawyering in their own favor only, incessant whining when things don't break their way, just straight-up cheating, etc.)

NPE:  Negative play experience.  Some crews are not just hard to play into, they're just deeply unfun to live with.  M1E Dreamer when he first released, could warp across the entire table turn 1, drop Lord Chompy Bits into your line to murder everything, then warp back to his own deployment zone line to prevent reprisal.   The only real counter was "don't put anything you love within 28 inches of dreamer".  There was an even sillier crew that was Levi and Collodi (back when Collodi was just a henchman, and Levi could take him) where Collodi sprinted across the entire table turn 1, delivered a message, then ate himself, followed by Levi eating himself also.   Net result, you win 1-0 with no counter play.   That's a king NPE right there.

Edit:  I'd be mistaken to not include the *queen* of NPE, m1e Pandora.   Playing against her in first edition was often referred to in such uplifting terms as "a root canal", "a chipper/shredder", and "a brain aneurysm".   When she got rolling there, no one in the enemy crew could really DO anything (had to pass a hard wp duel while at a minus flip) and attempting anything (even just passing) resulted in buckets of armor ignoring damage.  If you were an actual threat to Pandora's survival somehow, she'd chase you off the board with an attack that forced you to run away (morale was a thing in 1e).

Edited by Clement
how could I forget Pandora?
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18 minutes ago, Jesy Blue said:

What does TFG & NPE mean?

I wanna say TFG is Too F'n Good, but I might be wrong there. The kind of thought when you can't see a way to defeat an opposing crew.

NPE is Negative Play Experience. It's one thing to lose, even if you lose hard. It's another to lose and just have not enjoyed the experience at all. Sometimes it's matchup specific (playing a Condition based crew against a crew that ignores or easily removes that Condition). Sometimes it's just getting blendered turn one/two (Viks and RatBomb were key players in that style, but I'd add M1E's Dreamer Yoyo to it). Also any crew that worked on abusing a specific cornercase rule, or worked on a Gotcha interaction.

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@Clement has the right of it, to include recalling some of my specific examples from 1E.

TFG could be the nicest fellow in your gaming group, I might add...but if he's bringing highly tuned min/max tournament grade filth to your casual newbro night, watch how quickly your pool of new blood dries up. If your group doesn't have at least one of those, you are truly living your best life.

Sadly, M3E appears to lay out the welcome mat for that sort of degenerate play courtesy of "Dual Masters"

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I've never used either of those lines in a miniature game.  In an table top RPG, sure; guys who think character development = killing more.

.... but I might be the player who other players say that about: playing an 18 rats on the table Hamelin Crew, 12 Hound Nix crew, 180 Hormagaunt Tyrant army in 40k, 300 Gnoblar Oger army in AoS.  I just like being silly.

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I personally don't find dual masters to be particularly gruesome. Every time I've seen a secondary master they just kind of... melt. Having 15-16 stones of person who doesn't put out more than their stones worth of wounds and AP on the table, no matter how much cooler those wounds and AP may be, just takes away some teeth. 

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52 minutes ago, Kharnage said:

I personally don't find dual masters to be particularly gruesome. Every time I've seen a secondary master they just kind of... melt. Having 15-16 stones of person who doesn't put out more than their stones worth of wounds and AP on the table, no matter how much cooler those wounds and AP may be, just takes away some teeth. 

Out of interest, what dual masters have you seen?

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2 hours ago, Nikodemus said:

Out of interest, what dual masters have you seen?

Zoraida x Pandora, McCabe x Mei Feng, Nekima x Lilith, and Youko x Misaki. It is by no means a comprehensive list, but I think it's at least decently representative of what might be considered the more powerful combinations. Nekilith is of course the most successful of these combinations in my experience, and it can be a surprisingly aggressive, effective pairing, but I don't think it's unbeatable. 

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Zipp/Von Schill, McCabe/Asami, Molly/McMourning, Mei Feng/McCabe, [ANY NEVERBORN MASTER]/Zoraida, and all the triple master combos with Viktoria.

Again, not unstopable, but adds a twist to the proceedings that you don't get to see until after crew selection, when it's too late to prepare for.

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13 hours ago, jandalf said:

Sadly, M3E appears to lay out the welcome mat for that sort of degenerate play courtesy of "Dual Masters"

I don't think there is anything special in the word master that means that it will automatically be degenerate if you use 2 of them together. If you can build the game so you can put Justice and Fransisco in the same list without a problem, then  you ought to be able to build it so you can put Perdita and Justice in the same list. There were a few crazy combinations in 1st even though it had brawl rules, and you could build crazy combinations in M2e, but 2 masters wasn't a standard rule then so its not like they needed to test the masters for those combinations.

(It probably doesn't help, but I don't think 2 masters would have been the most degenerate in either of those editions either, and I have fond memories of facing Hamlin and the Dreamer in 1st ed, watching Collodi run across the table ready to deposit just under a million paired attacks at what ever he wanted.... They seemed relatively tame to the Ramos/Colette combination that enabled you to turn things into mannequins consistently with the :tome:tome:tome trigger)

2nd masters are often down powered in this edition (Several either lose abilities when they aren't the leader, or have a lower plentiful value on the upgrades they dish out, or just plain need models of a certain keyword to do some of their thing).

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On 7/23/2019 at 1:35 AM, Kharnage said:

Zoraida x Pandora, McCabe x Mei Feng, Nekima x Lilith, and Youko x Misaki. It is by no means a comprehensive list, but I think it's at least decently representative of what might be considered the more powerful combinations. Nekilith is of course the most successful of these combinations in my experience, and it can be a surprisingly aggressive, effective pairing, but I don't think it's unbeatable. 

Dual Master start to shine when you have a Summoner +card draw/control. Nellie+Dashel, Molly+Kirai, Asami+McCabe

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On 7/22/2019 at 9:32 AM, Morgan Vening said:

I wanna say TFG is Too F'n Good, but I might be wrong there. The kind of thought when you can't see a way to defeat an opposing crew.

NPE is Negative Play Experience. It's one thing to lose, even if you lose hard. It's another to lose and just have not enjoyed the experience at all. Sometimes it's matchup specific (playing a Condition based crew against a crew that ignores or easily removes that Condition). Sometimes it's just getting blendered turn one/two (Viks and RatBomb were key players in that style, but I'd add M1E's Dreamer Yoyo to it). Also any crew that worked on abusing a specific cornercase rule, or worked on a Gotcha interaction.

A lot of control mechanics are inherently NPE because if they work, you don't get do anything.  And if they don't work, the control-reliant crew gets steamrolled.

Certain players find control mechanics attractive.  Personally, I've never enjoyed using them or having them used on me.  But they'e a core mechanic of many games, so it's not like they're going anywhere.

 

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Malifaux has one of the steepest learning curves I've encountered.  If the concern is new players being chased away (as one person brought up), then there is a whole lot more than just limiting double masters that needs to be done.

Personally, I split my gameplay into three plans when at my club:

Brand new players: start simple with 2-4 models per side, add more rules/schemes in each time. Give the new player a stronger crew in combat and tell them they have the combat advantage (I usually give myself a slight mobility or trick advantage and tell them).

Casual games: nothing ridiculous. Within keyword + versatile only and single master, except for some occasional trial shenanigans. Mention to others when you are trying out models OOK or proxying (before they hire their crew).

Competitive play, tournament practice: whatever is legal is fair game. Build crews to win.

So far I have only been in the first two mindsets, but I think clubs/players having some sort of loose framework for how brutal they're getting with their crew compositions can help. It is always better if people are on the same page (my club has all new people so we are all one keyword by default, except one experienced player who tailors himself to the rest of us).

Like all games that have both casual players and hyper competitive players, communication about the level of gameplay expected can go a long way towards smoothing out the discrepancies.

EDIT: note I only apply this mindset to crew hiring/game setup. Once the models are on the board, I play my best regardless.

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Like if someone wants to play dual-masters with obscure OOK support, that's fine as long as I get to pull out every dirty trick from my faction as well.

But the Kaeris player who owns a handful of models shouldn't see every Resser player hire Archie + a nurse or two. If you're a casual player with a core mechanic of burning... At least some of the time you should be able to light things on fire.

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Just now, Maniacal_cackle said:

Like if someone wants to play dual-masters with obscure OOK support, that's fine as long as I get to pull out every dirty trick from my faction as well.

But the Kaeris player who owns a handful of models shouldn't see every Resser player hire Archie + a nurse or two.

I never take Archie with Kirai, McMourning, Reva, Yan-Lo, or Albus (Really like the Valedictorian). Definitely rarely take nurses OOK, and 2 of them are a hard sell for me even with McMourning.

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Just now, Saduhem said:

I never take Archie with Kirai, McMourning, Reva, Yan-Lo, or Albus (Really like the Valedictorian). Definitely rarely take nurses OOK, and 2 of them are a hard sell for me even with McMourning.

I don't actually play anyone but Molly and don't know masters generally that well.

But my overall point is that at a casual level, someone who owns 3 boxes shouldn't have their master perfectly countered by someone who owns 20 boxes and can pick the perfect answer.

Games should be loosely tailored to keep players on the same page about power level, and communication helps heaps with that.

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Just now, Maniacal_cackle said:

I don't actually play anyone but Molly and don't know masters generally that well.

But my overall point is that at a casual level, someone who owns 3 boxes shouldn't have their master perfectly countered by someone who owns 20 boxes and can pick the perfect answer.

Games should be loosely tailored to keep players on the same page about power level, and communication helps heaps with that.

I see your point!

I really liked the idea that a person could own a crew or two and not have to worry about having the whole faction. I'm hoping the current system translates well into that. Curious to look at all the metas once everyone gets their cards.

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Bringing it back to DMH.

I think the biggest thing is communication. If someone asks me to play a DMH game, sure! 

If that player then fields a ridiculously over the top crew while I was fielding at a casual level, we are probably going to have to communicate better next time.

At a tournament level, I think there'd have to be pretty strong evidence of DMH options being overpowered before I asked the tournament organisers to make changes. But at a casual level, constant adjustments are easy.

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I'd 100% play against DMH in pickup games.  Even if they were broken.  I mean, it's hard enough to get a game down in Los Angeles and anyway, I played against Eldar in 40k...

 

As far as tournaments go, I've never been big on the tourney scene, but just as an observer it feels like Wyrd's been signaling an intention to exclude them by default, with the option to include them.

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4 hours ago, Saduhem said:

I see your point!

I really liked the idea that a person could own a crew or two and not have to worry about having the whole faction. I'm hoping the current system translates well into that. Curious to look at all the metas once everyone gets their cards.

Depends on the crew. Some are strongest without OOK models. Some are stronger with OOK models.

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  • 3 weeks later...

DMH + Dual Masters is a tricky combination because the DMH Masters' models needed to be playable under some other Master as well so combining both the DMH Master and the "new" Master of the same keyword gives you dual synergy that is normally difficult to achieve in a normal Dual Master scenario. E.g., Dreamer can Summon Stitcheds for Collodi to Order around.

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9 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

DMH + Dual Masters is a tricky combination because the DMH Masters' models needed to be playable under some other Master as well so combining both the DMH Master and the "new" Master of the same keyword gives you dual synergy that is normally difficult to achieve in a normal Dual Master scenario. E.g., Dreamer can Summon Stitcheds for Collodi to Order around.

That was my concern in the original post. That at least three of the Masters have a larger "synergy" with another Master in that faction, than any two non-DMH Masters appear to. Collodi and Dreamer or Zoraida, Lilith and Nekima, and Ramos and Hoffman. Haven't done a deep dive to find out if Nicodem has any overtly powerful combinations.

As per OP, I don't have an issue with them being fielded as singular Masters. It's the dual master synergy I'm concerned about.

Similarly, I have no issue with Ryle. I have no issue with Melissa. But I'm not sure it's not slightly OP if both are on the table at the same time.

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