Will one of you go and do well at a tourney with guild?

[Cursed25]

11 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

https://www.bag-o-tools.com/live/#/live/1353

 

As of right now guild has 14, 36, 41, 53, 57, 58, 63, 67, 82, 83, 84.  

Out of 86.  I believe guild has about one win per player after 4 rounds, which seems really bad.

That being said, last time we submarined into a top five finish, maybe we can do that again.

 

no Arcanist in the top 10! 😮 I'm shocked! ahah!

[Beta]

I'm following the UK nationals round for round...and it feels kind of depressing seeing those rankings

[le_wahou]

I was in the tournament ending 3-0-4. I made huge mistakes on 3 rounds and a bad team choice on 4th defeat. Guild might be unforgiving but I am sure that we coule have done better 

[eddy]

Guild looks really sad now

[Delvan]

Give it time, lots of the high skill players are just following the crowd and picking the OP masters, doesn't mean we can't compete 😁

[Beta]

43...🙁
That's harsh

[Zebo]

Yeah...

And 4 TT on Top 5 is also harsh...

[4thstringer]

Gotta admit, it's left me a little shaken in my faction choice.

[Ogid]

48 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

Gotta admit, it's left me a little shaken in my faction choice.

The results for Guild are underwhelming... however mind this was a non-double master Tournament and Guild has very good double master options; maybe those rules are also affecting how the faction performs. Ajustements will eventually come as nerfs or buffs.

[admiralvorkraft]

Yeah but double masters are generally horrible for the game and shouldn't be a part of competitive play, so...

[4thstringer]

13 minutes ago, admiralvorkraft said:

Yeah but double masters are generally horrible for the game and shouldn't be a part of competitive play, so...

I keep hearing that but have seen no signs that it is true.  At the very least, they are no worse for the game than Shen long, yet only one is often banned from events.

[Starrius]

I still think shenlong can be beaten I honestly believe that people are just missing something, notnl sure what yet.

 

Where I've been saying 31 masters i think these results have cemented that i am going to focus more on guild now

[CD1248]

14 minutes ago, Starrius said:

I still think shenlong can be beaten I honestly believe that people are just missing something, notnl sure what yet.

This is from an Arcanist perspective, but the only real success I've had is using out of activation movement to put a mobile beater in threat range of Shen's deployment zone within the first few activations of turn 1, then going on a suicide run against clumps of squishy support pieces and hopefully tricking Shen into spending his first turn punching something in his own deployment zone.

It's worked twice, but honestly it's a case of trying to force play mistakes, which isn't a sustainable long term tactic.

[Ogid]

Well, the game was tested and balanced in beta taking in count double masters.

I'm not 100% sold on them tho, but I think the game should be played as it was tested and that arbitrary changes like these do mess with the balance. If tournament results prove double master is a problem (or some of them are), then they can be patched (or the most problematic ones may have some of their abilities/triggers locked behind the "if this model is the crew leader..." until they are fair again)

These results for Guild may mean several things:

• Guild is underpowered and need buffs badly (in that case change Pale rider to Enforcer(2) and call it a day XD).
• The most competitive players prefer playestyles offered by other factions and they are not playing Guild (so Guild is legit, but it doesn't have the top tier players).
• Guild rely in double masters more than other factions and it's handicapped with this limitation.

[Starrius]

I believe there is a specific set of people 

 

Myself included who dont agree with double masters and that meta will not use them, most areas in the UK seems to be like that I've not actually spoken to really anyone in the uk is is set on double masters,

 

The feel of double masters may be balanced but from a game point when you build a lost you going to have to take in to account any random models?

 

You can't see one master and then build around anything else the faction can throw at too.

 

From my games with guild vs single masters I am not put out by the low results of us the the UK masters people just havent figured out all the tech and there is also a fair bit if old thinking still involved.

 

I still think we can do well even if others don't 

[GameSoHard]

While Guild may have strong second masters so do all factions, and I think some factions have much stronger second masters. Hiring Zoraida as second master or Kirai for example is way stronger than anything guild have in my opinion. It's not like Guild are winning everything in the US (which I believe does allow second masters).

Saying "oh well they only play single master in the UK" is irrelevant, even with second masters Guild is a less-competitive take to a tournament.

[Starrius]

I do feel the costs of masters had been arbitrarily set I dont think they have been costed correctly

[Ludvig]

I feel last edition was the same as these results. Guild often placed low and weren't very popular with the top players. Then again there were players who took home entire events with a fixed list. It's so hard to separate the players from the results. It would be really interesting to once tivise top placing players from one faction to play another faction and see if they could do equally well there. 

[Beta]

I think the problem is not, that Guild is weak. The problem, in my opinion, is that we are too predictable.

And yes I Think for the UK Nationals not allowing additional Masters was a problem too. As was stated earlier the game was designed that way.
Looking at the German Nationals there was a much more even distribution and nobody dominated like that (some of us calculated, that the winner would have to have scored 7x 7:3...which is quite bonkers with a fixed crew).

[le_wahou]

We have strong masters but they are no big combo. Getting Nellie as Scheme runner or LJ as beater is nice, but if you have to face Shen Long + a teleporting murderous Mizaki, or Zoraida's obeys as second master ? I do not feel like this hinders the guild more than other factions.

[Ogid]

M3e is still young, it's very likely we still need to figure out a lot of things.

However Malifaux is set in a faction vs faction, not master vs master; the keyword system (OOK tax) and the synergies in each crew make more likely that the majority of the crew will be from that keyword; but there is a lot of unexplored potential in OOK picks and mind games. Even without double masters OOK and versatile picks should be considered, an example is Arcanist, that faction have some very good versatiles that can fit in any crew; a crew with Kaeris, 1 or 2 Wildfires and the rest being versatiles/OOK may be a very competitive crew or look at Seamus, very good master with a weak keyword that do just fine with Versatiles and OOK picks.

The problem of double master is it may create some opressive crews hard to predict only looking at the leader and it ask for a lot of knowledge from the other player to react accordingly both while doing the crew and playing it. That player not only has to know his own faction and roughtly what the other crew do, but also which are the OP combos and models the other faction may bring with that leader choice and make sure that if he go for a killy strategy, he take in count the most dangerous crew the other player can make to bring something able to face it. I need to test them more to know If I like them or not, my meta is still too young.

20 minutes ago, Starrius said:

I do feel the costs of masters had been arbitrarily set I dont think they have been costed correctly

They aren't that badly costed tho. 5SS extra more or less compensate the extra action; they have good abilities and actions but they have less Wds than his cost (usually paying 16SS for 12Wds, more in the case they also get an upgrade) and most masters are very resource intensive, a player will lack the resources to use 2 agressive masters to his max potential.

I could see the cost of some master slightly increased, especialy the more support-oriented ones and the more independent and dangerous ones. Zoraida for example could be increased by 1 or 2 SS taking in count how good she is supporting and that his totem is "free", Same with Kirai or Sommer, 1 or 2 SS would fit them as they may bring more than 2 summons to the table as second masters... Most summoners and good and independent beatsticks like Shenlong or Seamus may have their costs increased by 1SS (to match Lady J). McCabe cost could also be increased by 1 or the Plentiful(2) of his artifacts may be removed as second master (so only 1 actifact of each type allowed)...

[4thstringer]

So, I have a question about faction balancing.  To me, as I've probably made clear, the results of the UK masters (especially when combined with those from Nova open, Scottish gt and English gt) show that guild is in a very very bad place.   

There seems to be a real immediate defensive response to such a statement.  Like people assume that either 1. Most guild players are worse at the game.  Or 2. Truly good players don't play guild for other reasons.  

I want to be clear about this.  Given the diff of -64, even if both Matt Lewin and Lewis Phillips had played and gone first and second and matched the top players bananas diff of +24 (which obviously noone thinks would happen) guild still ends up at a -16 diff.  It would have also brought down some of the opposing diffs so maybe, just maybe guild wouldn't have ended up with the worst diff, but it would have been close.

[Starrius]

I think the issue with guild is actually their design, as a faction we have less "tricks" that other factions and tend to have a more straight forward play style, guild I think has always been the best faction tinatart in malifaux and I think that shows with the factions general following.  But most players after a while see other factions with their tricks and want some of those and that leads to what j think as more players moving on to other factions.

 

I've been all over the shop with factions this edition to learn as much as I can and given the results I think I want to pick 2 maybe 3 guild masters who can do the work.

 Given this what masters do plays feel as more viable?

In my mind master I think that can bring the work are:

Perdita

Sonia

Nellie

Basse

 

What do other people think?

[PirateCaptain]

I agree that guild are in a difficult spot.  No faction is ever created equal, and there will always be a hierarchy of faction power, what matters is how big that gap is.  If the gap is too large, then player skill starts to matter less, and if the gap is narrower player skill matters more.  I think the disparity between guild and the rest of the game is quite large, even when you consider duel master lists ( though I do believe the gap is potentially smaller when duel masters is allowed, but there just isn't enough data to back that up)

IMO, guild has always been a more active/aggressive faction that wants to be hitting and killing things, the new scenario packet does not reward aggressive killing as much which I think is actually a massive factor (not to mention other factions do have better killing options).  I think guild just needs to get a tiny bit more out of attacking things than they do now, not much though because i wouldn't want them to suddenly be OP, and I'm never a proponent of massive changes.  But like, for example, if some models had their utility triggers built in that could create an interesting playstyle that still rewards combat, without just turning into "nuke the world, scheme later." 

[Yore Huckleberry]

I just went to a tournament of about 18 people (Des Moines, with the Schemes and Stones guys) and went 3-1-12 with guild. Now, I’m brand new and these were my 4th, 5th, and 6th competitive games of Malifaux, with maybe 4-5 practice games on top of that.

I ran Nellie against Shenlong in corner corrupted idols, and went 5-3 by doubling up on power ritual and outflank. If I’d positioned Nellie fully in the corner, I could certainly have guaranteed 5-4 and possibly a full tie there.

I ran Lady J against Jack Daw in Reckoning (surely a mis-choice by my opponent) and nearly tabled him at 5-1. Flank deployment and straightforward: I fired into his shuffling advance and sent the Lone Marshal to score Power Ritual, picking up the endgame points with the totem and Lady J. Would have gone 6-1 but we ran out of time for me to finish scoring Dig their Graves the second time.

 

Then I ran Nellie against Zipp running pigapault, 2 taxidermists, and a bayou gator with coffee. It was Plant Explosives Wedge, so he had a lot of tricks. This went 5-4 as well, with Nellie’s crew controlling a lot of AP and limiting his drop locations. If he hadn’t taken prisoner on my claim jump investigator, I probably could have shenanigan’d at least a point out of it, given how many tokens Nellie can cause to drop, triggering the crime scene to push enemies away.

The Jury was a great tech piece in that game because his summons had a mere two hp, so he had trouble getting use out of his pigs before they auto-popped. Plus handing obeys to the ook investigator or the shared keyword False Witness gave some good card cycling on top o the Printing Press’s Arcane Reservoir.

I think we’ve got serious tools. I wish Alison Dade had Don’t Mind Me; that would be an easier scheme runner take than a second master in Nellie. But Nellie also trivializes some things like Detonate Charged or Search the Ruins. And running Perdita in a Marshals list for Reckoning or Turf War seems super strong.

Undercover Reporter is an amazing tech piece that can threaten a lone turf war marker, or take prisoner easily, or deny a lone Power Ritual runner, etc.

We've got tools, for sure, and I think we’ve even got pretty good tricks; they just have tight margins right now until we unlock them.