Questions about future support for Deadmans Hand And Changing factions

[LeperColony]

17 hours ago, Paddywhack said:

I'm not sure I'd agree they are 'invalidated'.

I've found this sentiment to be very common, and I've never really understood it.  Yes, Wyrd is signaling that DMH isn't going to get the kind of support offered to "active" models, but they remain fully playable.  I personally don't know anyone who would refuse to play against them casually, and while it wouldn't surprise me to learn most events won't allow them, certainly some will.

[ehren37]

On 8/8/2019 at 1:08 AM, solkan said:

Well, if you don't mind bluntness, the changes weren't made to benefit you, specifically, as a player.

It's basically the gaming equivalent of "We're building a public library/airport, and your house is located on the prime spot for it.  The city planners discussed the alternatives, and this is the plan they had the funding for."[/quote]

If you don't mind MY bluntness, it's a stupid fluff injection brought about by a small group of fans intent on cramming THEIR story in. The far better alternative would be to NOT invalidate 3 of my 4 Neverborn masters, and keep the little RP tea party in special events only. If the game can handle the same unique models on both sides of the table, it can handle a battle featuring allegedly dead/imprisoned/missing masters. It's not a RPG anyways. 

Not only are the DMH masters less balanced, they also won't be receiving any future development. Pretty crappy for losing a small online popularity contest run in an echo chamber. Hopefully they ruin your collection or favorite master next. 

[ehren37]

2 hours ago, LeperColony said:

I've found this sentiment to be very common, and I've never really understood it.  Yes, Wyrd is signaling that DMH isn't going to get the kind of support offered to "active" models, but they remain fully playable.  I personally don't know anyone who would refuse to play against them casually, and while it wouldn't surprise me to learn most events won't allow them, certainly some will.

If it's not a big deal, then you shouldnt be opposed to the reverse situation, where DMH are allowed by default and only banned in RP oriented events. 

[LeperColony]

11 minutes ago, ehren37 said:

If it's not a big deal, then you shouldnt be opposed to the reverse situation, where DMH are allowed by default and only banned in RP oriented events. 

Unfortunately, this is a logical fallacy.  I said the sentiment that they're invalidated is common and incorrect.  They're not only not invalidated, but Wyrd provided rules for them.  However, it also provided guidance which stated that the models are assumed to be unavailable for official events, though the TO can decide otherwise.

A fair inference to draw from such a position is that the models were not subject to the same scrutiny as the "active" models (personally, I don't buy that they were sidelined purely for fluff reasons, especially since two of the hardest masters to balance, Collodi and Nico are among them) or their interactions, especially in dual master crews, are not as well understood.  Those are perfectly reasonable grounds to have the presumption rest against their inclusion.

Of course, that's an assumption.  It's also possible that they are too weak because their model supports aren't sufficiently developed.  Or perhaps I'm wrong and it really is just fluff driven.

But since the publisher, who should be a position to know better than I (especially at the start, where they've been doing testing and I haven't) advises a course of action, it's entirely consistent to follow it and still say the sentiment that the models are invalidated is incorrect.

[Yew Arcane]

10 minutes ago, ehren37 said:

If you don't mind MY bluntness, it's a stupid fluff injection brought about by a small group of fans intent on cramming THEIR story in. The far better alternative would be to NOT invalidate 3 of my 4 Neverborn masters, and keep the little RP tea party in special events only. If the game can handle the same unique models on both sides of the table, it can handle a battle featuring allegedly dead/imprisoned/missing masters. It's not a RPG anyways. 

Not only are the DMH masters less balanced, they also won't be receiving any future development. Pretty crappy for losing a small online popularity contest run in an echo chamber. Hopefully they ruin your collection or favorite master next. 

That 'stupid fluff injection' isn't brought about by players. It's brought about by Wyrd's writing team. The only place they're not allowed by default are at Wyrd events. AKA the events where the story impacts or is impacted.

[Math Mathonwy]

15 hours ago, LeperColony said:

A fair inference to draw from such a position is that the models were not subject to the same scrutiny as the "active" models (personally, I don't buy that they were sidelined purely for fluff reasons, especially since two of the hardest masters to balance, Collodi and Nico are among them) or their interactions, especially in dual master crews, are not as well understood.  Those are perfectly reasonable grounds to have the presumption rest against their inclusion.

Of course, that's an assumption.  It's also possible that they are too weak because their model supports aren't sufficiently developed.  Or perhaps I'm wrong and it really is just fluff driven.

I think that the idea that the very concepts of Collodi and Nico were too powerful for this game is very, very suspect. I also find it mildly insulting towards Wyrd to say that the testing of DMH models was naturally half-assed.

But fluff killing off models from the game is such a weird concept when the games really don't represent the fluff. I mean, it's highly unlikely that Wyrd will ever write a story where a spoon-armed Gremlin Toddler kills off Nekima or where two Johans are fighting one another or where Bete Noire plants explosives around Piglets or whatever.

[Ludvig]

@Math Mathonwy

I find your lack of faith disturbing... 

A gremlin toddler killing Nekima and the nephilim losing their second master to DMH so Barbie can come back to nvb sounds like the perfect move for the next edition. 😅 

[Yew Arcane]

59 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

I think that the idea that the very concepts of Collodi and Nico were too powerful for this game is very, very suspect. I also find it mildly insulting towards Wyrd to say that the testing of DMH models was naturally half-assed.

But fluff killing off models from the game is such a weird concept when the games really don't represent the fluff. I mean, it's highly unlikely that Wyrd will ever write a story where a spoon-armed Gremlin Toddler kills off Nekima or where two Johans are fighting one another or where Bete Noire plants explosives around Piglets or whatever.

Except there are doppelgangers and other things that can make themselves look how they want to in the lore. So mirror matches are actually supported in the lore. Sure, there are some.... oddities between gameplay and lore, but that's something that happens in any game.

[Math Mathonwy]

1 minute ago, Yew Arcane said:

Except there are doppelgangers and other things that can make themselves look how they want to in the lore. So mirror matches are actually supported in the lore. Sure, there are some.... oddities between gameplay and lore, but that's something that happens in any game.

So Doppelgangers can become anything except for the DMH characters?

[Yew Arcane]

Just now, Math Mathonwy said:

So Doppelgangers can become anything except for the DMH characters?

Sure they can. Just not in official Wyrd events. Because rules don't always match lore.

[Math Mathonwy]

1 minute ago, Yew Arcane said:

Sure they can. Just not in official Wyrd events. Because rules don't always match lore.

My point was that if your explanation for extremely unlikely situations in games is "Doppelgangers did it" or "it was all a dream" or "it's a what-if scenario" or whatever, then taking out dead models for fluff reasons seems weird since those same justifications work just as well for dead characters.

Heck, we even have Amelia Bathory (and other similar models) - Nicodem could be an alt model for her!

And this whole thing is very new - Perdita wasn't unplayable in official Wyrd tournaments while she was in a coma in the fluff.

[Yew Arcane]

3 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

My point was that if your explanation for extremely unlikely situations in games is "Doppelgangers did it" or "it was all a dream" or "it's a what-if scenario" or whatever, then taking out dead models for fluff reasons seems weird since those same justifications work just as well for dead characters.

Heck, we even have Amelia Bathory (and other similar models) - Nicodem could be an alt model for her!

And this whole thing is very new - Perdita wasn't unplayable in official Wyrd tournaments while she was in a coma in the fluff.

I also said that oftentimes rules and story don't match. Let's look at other examples. In Star Wars, lightsabers can cut through anything, but not a single Star Wars game has you slicing through everything with impunity. And when Perdita was in a coma in the lore we didn't have six factions, much less seven with an eighth on the way. And she wasn't dead, or locked in a prison earthside, or locked in a magical prison, or missing entirely. And they're only banned by default in official Wyrd events, that TOs are banning them too is on them. The Dead Man's Hand characters are playable in casual play so it is not like you can't make use of them. Your resistance to this is strange.

[Math Mathonwy]

2 hours ago, Yew Arcane said:

I also said that oftentimes rules and story don't match. Let's look at other examples. In Star Wars, lightsabers can cut through anything, but not a single Star Wars game has you slicing through everything with impunity.

Have to say that I've no idea whether you're agreeing with me here or not - kinda not following you here, unfortunately.

2 hours ago, Yew Arcane said:

And when Perdita was in a coma in the lore we didn't have six factions, much less seven with an eighth on the way. And she wasn't dead, or locked in a prison earthside, or locked in a magical prison, or missing entirely.

"She was in a coma, not in a prison, so naturally much more playable" must be the one of the weirder arguments I've heard here. But I'm not at all sure what you're even arguing here for? Just to disagree with me? Or am I missing your point? As this seems to contradict what you were saying previously.

2 hours ago, Yew Arcane said:

And they're only banned by default in official Wyrd events, that TOs are banning them too is on them. The Dead Man's Hand characters are playable in casual play so it is not like you can't make use of them. Your resistance to this is strange.

TOs are already banning them. Two years from now I fully expect them to be completely banned. It's how things go - this isn't my first rodeo.

[Yew Arcane]

14 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Have to say that I've no idea whether you're agreeing with me here or not - kinda not following you here, unfortunately.

"She was in a coma, not in a prison, so naturally much more playable" must be the one of the weirder arguments I've heard here. But I'm not at all sure what you're even arguing here for? Just to disagree with me? Or am I missing your point? As this seems to contradict what you were saying previously.

TOs are already banning them. Two years from now I fully expect them to be completely banned. It's how things go - this isn't my first rodeo.

In official and tournament play, sure. But how do you expect to ban something from casual play when there are rules for it? You're also forgetting that she was in a coma in first edition, and came out before the shift between editions. You are so dead-set on this being the worst thing ever that you are making excuses for why it's a terrible choice and not a good thing for a story-driven game to have characters removed. Wyrd didn't have to make rules for characters that were removed from the story at all, so your being mad that they did make rules for them is rather absurd.

[Paddywhack]

4 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

I think that the idea that the very concepts of Collodi and Nico were too powerful for this game is very, very suspect. I also find it mildly insulting towards Wyrd to say that the testing of DMH models was naturally half-assed.

While I never thought Nico was OP, apparently he was breaking things, flipping off nannies, and kicking puppies at a lot of UK events (from what I heard). Collodi was similarly a tough nut to crack. While I don't think DMH were 'half-assed', I also don't think they had the time to focus quite as much on them as the rest of the Masters that were going to be tourney legal. 

My personal theory - and it's just a theory - is  these masters are just temporarily gone. They needed to remove some bloat to allow for more game growth, now and down the line. I fully anticipate that we will see these models return to play sometime in the future. Maybe not the same as we are used to - after all Nicodem was killed and trapped in a SS. Does that make him more or less powerful? What happens to Lilith while in the pit? Who will support her when she returns? Maybe she decides to take on a new persona and ends up being an Explorer Master in disguise as she susses out Titania. Same with Nico - could see him leading an Explorer crew as he searches for lore to free him from the SS.

These removals open up not only legroom for new stories, but allows some breathing room for these masters to come back later in perhaps vastly new and different ways. It sucks if you were really into playing that Master, but hopefully it will open up down the road in new and interesting ways. 

[Cleezy]

14 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

While I never thought Nico was OP, apparently he was breaking things, flipping off nannies, and kicking puppies at a lot of UK events (from what I heard). Collodi was similarly a tough nut to crack. While I don't think DMH were 'half-assed', I also don't think they had the time to focus quite as much on them as the rest of the Masters that were going to be tourney legal. 

My personal theory - and it's just a theory - is  these masters are just temporarily gone. They needed to remove some bloat to allow for more game growth, now and down the line. I fully anticipate that we will see these models return to play sometime in the future. Maybe not the same as we are used to - after all Nicodem was killed and trapped in a SS. Does that make him more or less powerful? What happens to Lilith while in the pit? Who will support her when she returns? Maybe she decides to take on a new persona and ends up being an Explorer Master in disguise as she susses out Titania. Same with Nico - could see him leading an Explorer crew as he searches for lore to free him from the SS.

These removals open up not only legroom for new stories, but allows some breathing room for these masters to come back later in perhaps vastly new and different ways. It sucks if you were really into playing that Master, but hopefully it will open up down the road in new and interesting ways. 

I think you are mistaking m3e Nicodem with m2e - the main offender powerwise in DMH is Collodi though I believe some nasty Ramos combinations were unearthed. Also over here we saw DMH as a short term option to encourage players of those masters to get involved in m3e but it was made known that they wouldn't be tourney legal for the long term as they were not intended that way.

It is likely that these masters have temporarily been removed from the game and may feature in some way in the future - will Lilith be trapped for a long time? Is Ramos going to be broken out of jail? So on and so forth.

[ehren37]

3 hours ago, Yew Arcane said:

Sure they can. Just not in official Wyrd events. Because rules don't always match lore.

Which is stupid. If you want an RPG, Through the Breach is thataway.

 

Fluff shouldnt drive the game, particularly since individual games don't match fluff. I mean, how are you still using any of the models I killed in my games? Because fluff uber alles makes soooo much sense in a shared game where you personally may kill the same unique model over and over in an individual tournament. This reeks of 90's RPG design where mediocre writers insisted on railroading their meta story down your throat.

Again, if the DMH models are balanced, they should be allowed by default. Moreover, don't cut off support for those themes and keywords for future development. Otherwise, yes, you did invalidate 3/4 of my masters.  

[theamazingmrg]

11 minutes ago, ehren37 said:

Which is stupid. If you want an RPG, Through the Breach is thataway.

 

Fluff shouldnt drive the game, particularly since individual games don't match fluff. I mean, how are you still using any of the models I killed in my games? Because fluff uber alles makes soooo much sense in a shared game where you personally may kill the same unique model over and over in an individual tournament. This reeks of 90's RPG design where mediocre writers insisted on railroading their meta story down your throat.

Again, if the DMH models are balanced, they should be allowed by default. Moreover, don't cut off support for those themes and keywords for future development. Otherwise, yes, you did invalidate 3/4 of my masters.  

Can you play the models you bought?

 

Yes.  Therefore nothing is invalidated.  All the talk of fluff, future support, tournaments is beside the point.  The only thing that matters as to whether your collection is invalid for game purposes  is do those models have rules?  By that token the only "invalid" models at this time are the ones from The WIld Ones box who don't have cards (not that you can't use them as proxies for the models they were originally alts for, of course, they just can't all be used together).

 

Now, you may not be able to use them in a particular game format, but there is no law that says that every model a company releases has to be valid in every possible game format in perpetuity.

 

You may not like it, and that's your prerogative, but Wyrd are entitled to make whatever decisions they like as to the future plans for models and themes in their game and tehir IP.  They've made sure that virtually everyone can continue using their models in some form.  Thats more than some companies do, and its certainly better than the M2E launch when many Masters were literally unplayable in the early days as there were no rules for them.

[Paddywhack]

31 minutes ago, Cleezy said:

I think you are mistaking m3e Nicodem with m2e

Sorry - I was referring to why he was put into DMH in particular. I know there was the whole story thing, but they could have kept him in regular play if they really wanted to. I think it was an excuse to let him cool off and find a better way to bring him back later perhaps. 

[Math Mathonwy]

 

53 minutes ago, Yew Arcane said:

You're also forgetting that she was in a coma in first edition, and came out before the shift between editions.

How am I forgetting it? She was in a coma yet was playable. Whether an edition shift happened in between or not has absolutely zero to do with anything. M1e was played a lot (there were even official tournaments) while she was in a coma in the fluff.

53 minutes ago, Yew Arcane said:

You are so dead-set on this being the worst thing ever

What?

53 minutes ago, Yew Arcane said:

that you are making excuses for why it's a terrible choice and not a good thing for a story-driven game to have characters removed.

Guild Ball is much more story-driven in that the characters and factions change far, far more radically than in Malifaux and characters die left and right and yet they manage to keep their models playable across edition changes.

53 minutes ago, Yew Arcane said:

Wyrd didn't have to make rules for characters that were removed from the story at all, so your being mad that they did make rules for them is rather absurd.

Wyrd didn't have to do anything. They couldn't stopped producing games altogether and began knitting beanies. I'm sure that were that the case, there would still be someone telling disappointed minis games fans to quit their whining.

I'm not making ultimatums. I'm not telling anyone else what they should do. All I'm doing is criticizing Wyrd for their decision and then criticizing people when they defend that decision with silly arguments.

53 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

While I never thought Nico was OP, apparently he was breaking things, flipping off nannies, and kicking puppies at a lot of UK events (from what I heard). Collodi was similarly a tough nut to crack.

I doubt that you're arguing that the concepts of "Master Necromancer" and "Puppet Master of Puppets" are too powerful and cannot be made work but it seems that you are based on what you quoted. If you really are arguing that, I can easily adjust M2e or M3e Nico or Collodi in a way that makes them extremely weak while retaining their character but, like I said, I doubt that that's what you're arguing so I won't unless you ask me to.

[Adran]

22 hours ago, ehren37 said:

 

Not only are the DMH masters less balanced, they also won't be receiving any future development. Pretty crappy for losing a small online popularity contest run in an echo chamber. Hopefully they ruin your collection or favorite master next. 

I don't agree with the statement that they are less balanced. As far as I could tell during the beta, they received equal effort on wyrds behalf to make them balanced as any other master. 

 I also think the assumption that they'll receive no support has no evidence. At least lilith will get keyword support, and I would not be surprised to see new puppets or undead or constructs that will work with them, probably as well as with other keywords. 

You might be right, but you might also be completely wrong with those assumptions.

[Paddywhack]

11 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

I doubt that you're arguing that the concepts of "Master Necromancer" and "Puppet Master of Puppets" are too powerful and cannot be made work but it seems that you are based on what you quoted. If you really are arguing that, I can easily adjust M2e or M3e Nico or Collodi in a way that makes them extremely weak while retaining their character but, like I said, I doubt that that's what you're arguing so I won't unless you ask me to.

I'm arguing they, well Nico at least, was causing balance issues at the end of 2E. Yes, they could be re-balanced him if they wanted to spend the time - though I imagine some people would still be angry with any changes. Instead they took him out (at least for now) of competitive play (you can still play him!) and chose to develop other Masters and play styles. And they did spend time in Beta trying to balance the DMH. However, not as many people were actively testing and playing them, so it was more difficult. Still there were plenty of vocal discussions in both closed and open Beta about Nicodem's crew. 

I understand your frustration - Nicodem is the master that brought me into Malifaux, so I was disappointed too. What I don't understand is the idea that removing a few Masters (while also bringing in new ones) completely ruined everything. It sucks if you solo'd him, but the rest of his models are still playable in competition and all are in friendly play. And the game overall is much better (especially with the reduction in summoning generally). 

[Math Mathonwy]

35 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

I'm arguing they, well Nico at least, was causing balance issues at the end of 2E. Yes, they could be re-balanced him if they wanted to spend the time - though I imagine some people would still be angry with any changes. Instead they took him out (at least for now) of competitive play (you can still play him!) and chose to develop other Masters and play styles. And they did spend time in Beta trying to balance the DMH.

I 100% disagree that Wyrd removed DMH models because they were too powerful in 2e. I don't really think that there is any chance of it being that way and the whole idea seems just... utterly bizarre to me. But we won't know for sure unless they tell us so I'm not sure there is a point in conversing this particular point further.

35 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

However, not as many people were actively testing and playing them, so it was more difficult. Still there were plenty of vocal discussions in both closed and open Beta about Nicodem's crew. 

I would be very surprised if DMH Masters were the least tested ones as there were completely new Masters without crew models out yet and there were also less played factions like Gremlins.

35 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

I understand your frustration - Nicodem is the master that brought me into Malifaux, so I was disappointed too. What I don't understand is the idea that removing a few Masters (while also bringing in new ones) completely ruined everything. It sucks if you solo'd him, but the rest of his models are still playable in competition and all are in friendly play. And the game overall is much better (especially with the reduction in summoning generally). 

I never said that removing those "ruined everything" or anything even close to resembling that. I am saddened by the massive amount of minis that I won't be able to use in tournaments anymore - I play dozens of minis games and have gone through a ton of edition shifts and this one has been by far the most destructive to me outside of some GW stuff. But it didn't "ruin everything".

I won't probably be buying non-Gremlin models anymore because I feel that I need to have a full faction as Wyrd might have story reasons to kill off any of my models and if I have a full faction all my remaining models will remain relevant.

We did lose a player from the gaming group who had only Lilith and was thoroughly disgusted but so it goes, I guess.

[solkan]

42 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

I 100% disagree that Wyrd removed DMH models because they were too powerful in 2e. I don't really think that there is any chance of it being that way and the whole idea seems just... utterly bizarre to me. But we won't know for sure unless they tell us so I'm not sure there is a point in conversing this particular point further.

Yes, it's too bad that we'll never know what Wyrd said to the beta testers concerning why DMH exists.  🤷‍♀️ 

Yeah, it's the sort of thing where the use evolves and changes over time.  But, seriously.

[Paddywhack]

1 hour ago, Math Mathonwy said:

I 100% disagree that Wyrd removed DMH models because they were too powerful in 2e. I don't really think that there is any chance of it being that way and the whole idea seems just... utterly bizarre to me. But we won't know for sure unless they tell us so I'm not sure there is a point in conversing this particular point further.

I don't mean to imply that was the 'whole' reason, but I could see it being 'part' of the reason. There were plenty of powerful masters that are still in, so no, that alone wasn't the reason. 

1 hour ago, Math Mathonwy said:

I 100% disagree that Wyrd removed DMH models because they were too powerful in 2e. I don't really think that there is any chance of it being that way and the whole idea seems just... utterly bizarre to me. But we won't know for sure unless they tell us so I'm not sure there is a point in conversing this particular point further.

It sure seemed like they had less chatter overall than other forums and faction masters, even the new ones. That is just my observation though and could be wrong. Proxying was expected during the beta due to all the new models, so i know the new masters did get some love.