How has balance been in M3E so far for you?

[LeperColony]

10 minutes ago, Flippin' Wyrd George said:

Form a tournament standpoint I'm looking forward to Gaining Grounds. I'm really enjoying getting to know M3E with a new faction at the moment though! General balance feels closer than wave 5 M2E, but the few imbalances I've come across feel much more extreme than anything from wave 5.

Which keywords have you found to be the most abusive?  I'm guessing they'd be based around control and/or resource manipulation as opposed to beaters or shooters?

[Flippin' Wyrd George]

17 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

Which keywords have you found to be the most abusive?  I'm guessing they'd be based around control and/or resource manipulation as opposed to beaters or shooters?

Currently:

Nightmare

Retainer/Ancestor

Tormented

 

Are the main three I've played against that I found extremely hard work to make any sort of an inroad with to the point it is not fun. Most of my local community agrees with these. Nightmare we've had a good go at and are making some progress but its a constant uphill struggle which I think is mostly down to balance rather than player skill. I've heard rumblings over Monk , Qi and Gong and Amalgam as well but haven't experienced those first hand yet.

 

So yes, the majority seems resource/control based.

 

 

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

@Flippin' Wyrd George, how much terrain do you use?

This edition is heavily balanced around terrain it seems, and when we haven't included enough, it ruins games.

Nightmare needs to see you to make you fail willpower duels at long range, tormented needs to see you to drag you into whirling death ball. Don't know about Yan Lo.

One factor to keep in mind for any discussion on balance, though! Severe terrain buffs some crews, and some crews are hindered enormously by blocking or dense terrain.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Honestly for competitive play, the first thing I'd like to see is some kind of terrain guide or generator.

Poorly placed terrain has decided some of my matches before they started (for instance, one time I flipped attacker and chose a forest that basically shut down my opponent doing anything to my support master Molly).

So it is a problem if too much and a problem if too little! Would definitely like more guidance on terrain. 

[Flippin' Wyrd George]

5 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Honestly for competitive play, the first thing I'd like to see is some kind of terrain guide or generator.

Poorly placed terrain has decided some of my matches before they started (for instance, one time I flipped attacker and chose a forest that basically shut down my opponent doing anything to my support master Molly).

So it is a problem if too much and a problem if too little! Would definitely like more guidance on terrain. 

We use plenty, I reckon. This is a typical board minus some concealing/severe.

 

[Adran]

On ‎7‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 8:47 PM, marke83 said:

I've played maybe 5 games of 3E. I've only fielded  Redchapel and lost every game. Vs viks, zipp, dreamer.. I haven't felt any issues with balance with my very small sample size, but how about you people?

Is the edition balanced, and if so, how well? I guess factions' internal balance is a bit off, but that's a very minor concern with the new hiring system imo.

Its much easier to learn the crew you play, so in the early days of a new edition I would expect several of the keywords to seem overpowered, but as people learn to face them and counter them, I hope that would drop down. Flipping wyrd George and his "How do I beat the dreamer" thread is a good example of what I expect to kind of be happing against several keywords all over. Hoffman is probably a good example of a keyword that seems powerful against a random crew, but a lot of the power is in that his crew has lots of armour, so once you realise this and hire anti armour models as a response to facing him his apparent power level drops a lot.

 

There are almost certainly some imbalances out there. Some of them may already have been found, others may well not show up for another year or so, but some of the imbalances that people are seeing now will probably not be model imbalances, but learning curve imbalances, so much less of an issue. (The M2E example of Perditas stat 7 Df often got lots of new players complaining about its power, but the crew was not considered one of the top crews amongst the top players who knew how to deal with it)

[Maniacal_cackle]

5 hours ago, Flippin' Wyrd George said:

We use plenty, I reckon. This is a typical board minus some concealing/severe.

Yeah, that looks like plenty!

Another angle to consider is trying to swap crews. A good way to rule out player skill discrepancies is swapping crews and seeing who wins after a few games (although of course this doesn't account for learning curves of the crew, or some other factors).

[LeperColony]

7 hours ago, Flippin' Wyrd George said:

We use plenty, I reckon. This is a typical board minus some concealing/severe.

 

Nice table!

When they built that water wheel in the desert, what were they planning on doing with it...

[Flippin' Wyrd George]

30 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

Nice table!

When they built that water wheel in the desert, what were they planning on doing with it...

Thank you! It is pretty much entirely from TT combat and was assembled for just under £100 I think...

 

Who knows about the wheel! Perhaps there was a drought 🤔

[Mycellanious]

9 hours ago, Flippin' Wyrd George said:

We use plenty, I reckon. This is a typical board minus some concealing/severe.

 

see to me, thats not a lot of terrain. You have a good amount of large, blocking terrain (which is important), but I see almost no scatter terrain. When I play I set up the board like that, then we sprinkle some crates (height 1 destructible) and trees (height 3) until it looks like the top of a muffin

[Modernpenguin]

6 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

see to me, thats not a lot of terrain. You have a good amount of large, blocking terrain (which is important), but I see almost no scatter terrain. When I play I set up the board like that, then we sprinkle some crates (height 1 destructible) and trees (height 3) until it looks like the top of a muffin

The top of a muffin? 😂

[Mycellanious]

28 minutes ago, Modernpenguin said:

The top of a muffin? 😂

[Paddywhack]

46 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

see to me, thats not a lot of terrain. You have a good amount of large, blocking terrain (which is important), but I see almost no scatter terrain. When I play I set up the board like that, then we sprinkle some crates (height 1 destructible) and trees (height 3) until it looks like the top of a muffin

Agreed. I think Concealing is going to be important not to forget to add. Cover isn't as good as it used to be, but Concealing can be vital to help balance ranged attacks. Add a couple steam plumes near the oil rig, maybe one of the buildings is on fire, etc. 

That's not a bad amount of terrain, but I'm always in favor of more scatter (smaller ht crates, etc.). Helps break up charge lanes and forces opponents to actually move around a bit more. 

[Mycellanious]

23 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

Agreed. I think Concealing is going to be important not to forget to add. Cover isn't as good as it used to be, but Concealing can be vital to help balance ranged attacks. Add a couple steam plumes near the oil rig, maybe one of the buildings is on fire, etc. 

That's not a bad amount of terrain, but I'm always in favor of more scatter (smaller ht crates, etc.). Helps break up charge lanes and forces opponents to actually move around a bit more. 

Crates I think are fantastic this edition because they are a terrain piece you have direct control over. They can block charge lanes early, but dont cost too much to climb over, and you can decide to spend a cheap model's ap to create a charge lane for a more expensive model. But if you do so, you gotta be careful about giving your opponent a lane. Overall, I think crates are the mvp terrain this edition

[Modernpenguin]

On 7/18/2019 at 7:00 PM, Paddywhack said:

Agreed. I think Concealing is going to be important not to forget to add. Cover isn't as good as it used to be, but Concealing can be vital to help balance ranged attacks. Add a couple steam plumes near the oil rig, maybe one of the buildings is on fire, etc. 

That's not a bad amount of terrain, but I'm always in favor of more scatter (smaller ht crates, etc.). Helps break up charge lanes and forces opponents to actually move around a bit more. 

Concealing is often cancelled out by dedicated shooty crews in my opinion.. However, with blocking terrain, if you can't be seen, you can't be shot! 
Also, the negative flip on cover is pretty nice, helps against nasty severes being cheated in. 
Though maybe im just used to big forests, and not smaller pieces of concealing. 

[GameSoHard]

On 7/18/2019 at 9:32 AM, Flippin' Wyrd George said:

Currently:

Nightmare

Retainer/Ancestor

Tormented

I'll echo this for the Retainer/Ancestor and Tormented crews. I've played Retainer/Ancestor+Kirai ~8ish times now (playing Guild Dashel) and it always feels like I've bought a knife to a gun fight. There's possibly a skill disparity, I certainly make mistakes in every game but not to the extremes I've experienced.

Similarly a very experienced m2e (new to m3e) 'Faux player played the same guy with Tormented+Kirai (he was playing Levi) and it was one of the most one-sided games either of them had seen.

It's hard to tell if it's the keyword, Kirai as second master, me/us not figuring out the correct counter or what but man...those Games, So Hard.

[solkan]

On 7/18/2019 at 12:36 AM, Flippin' Wyrd George said:

We use plenty, I reckon. This is a typical board minus some concealing/severe.

 

If you push all of that terrain together, does it actually cover one third of the table?  (It sounds like a silly or unnecessary way of checking, but it's the simplest way of checking coverage, and it's really easy to over estimate how much area your terrain covers if you don't.)

I could be wrong, but it looks like it wouldn't.  I'll grant that that's a lot of individual terrain pieces, but that's also a lot of relatively small terrain pieces.

 

[Saduhem]

Concealment has been huge for me this edition. Especially the concealing + severe or dense + severe + concealing (woods).

 

[Fetid Strumpet]

Personally feel if specific terrain is required to make a balanced game Wyrd should have made that a requirement in the book.

[Angelshard]

@Fetid Strumpet I don't think it's a specific type that is required, it's a variety of different terrain types. I do agree that there should be a rough terrain guide in the rulebook.

I also know it's something that's been requested a lot of times so my guess is that its gonna be in the final release. 

[Fetid Strumpet]

?

what do you mean? The final release has happened and it’s not in it. And we know why they don’t. Terrain is always an issue because they don’t define what must be on the table to be fair.

[Angelshard]

@Fetid Strumpet I was thinking the physical book. I might be wrong, but the m2e rules PDF had a lot fewer details than the physical copy, so I'm thinking that might the situation again. 

Also it could come in the gg document.

I do agree that it's something that should have guidelines in the official rules. 

[Fetid Strumpet]

The physical book is out. It is identical to the pdf document except the physical document has a fluff section at the front that has surprisingly improved writing, and ties together a good number of elements with better clarity. 

[Paddywhack]

On 7/20/2019 at 11:46 AM, Fetid Strumpet said:

Personally feel if specific terrain is required to make a balanced game Wyrd should have made that a requirement in the book.

I'm not sure I'd say it's 'required', but they do say that using the correct amount of  terrain with a variety of terrain traits is important for a fun game for both players. They go on to add that Cover/Concealement is important for long ranged attacks and Severe is important to make some areas harder to get to. So they do address it, but don't go into specifics as that would be difficult to do. (p40)

The change to Cover this edition is what I think is throwing things for some tables as, while it is still helpful against ranged attacks, it isn't as good as last edition. Concealment kind of took some it's thunder, but you really need a mix of both on the table if possible. 

[Stonewall78]

On 7/18/2019 at 12:36 AM, Flippin' Wyrd George said:

We use plenty, I reckon. This is a typical board minus some concealing/severe.

 

I would be fine with playing on a table like that. Sure it could use a bit more but not much. Sometimes theme and setting are more important than having a perfect 1/3rd table of terrain.