Keyword power rankings

[darksoul281]

11 hours ago, Razhem said:

Ototo be a boss is that extra shadow token since it really helps a lot with the crew synergy

the ++ on the damage flip and 5/6/7 damage helps a lot xD

[Cursed25]

11 hours ago, gozer said:

Let's say you draw 2 low cards. Are you going to put them in your hand and put two high cards on top? There's almost no value in that unless you are going up against a negative flip with your next action (e.g. shooting into engagement or concealment). That way you can guarantee that even with a negative flip you have a high total (since you wouldn't be able to cheat it otherwise). Outside of that situation, I don't see a value in replacing two low cards in your deck with two high cards from your hand.

Let's say you draw 2 high cards. You would reasonably swap those with two lower cards from your hand, right? However, now you have two low cards on the top of your deck and will either need play around those incoming low flips by either intending to cheat (with the high cards you would have flipped anyway), or by taking actions that can utilize those low cards.

Occasionally you might find a suit of a high enough value where you can plan around your next action but those situations don't come up often enough to rate Rig the Deck higher than middling.

As an aside, imagine if Rig the Deck allowed you to draw then discard. Either you're cycling bad cards out of your deck or replacing bad cards in your hand. Unfortunately, this would be insanely OP as "Rig the Deck: +2" would be equivalent in value to a soulstone.

knowledge is power! and rig the deck gives you knowledge and control over your deck! This is why it's an amazing ability!

 

your medium cards are always useful with rig the deck! Tannen, Graves, Kitty and Lynch each have actions or bonus actions that needs a low cards to pass the TN. These abilities are also great way to cycle very low cards out if you don't need to pass the bonus action! Often turn 1 I will burn my low cards on these abilities and at start of turn 2 I have a very strong hand!

 

If Graves activates and I know I want to punch another beater for his first action, I will put a 1 and a 12 on top and use a focus to burn the 1. I don't know about you but how many times have you use a focus to only flip two low cards. It's very frustrating because now you have to cheat from your hand to not ''lose'' your focused dmg. With rig the deck you have the best of both world, you cycle your low while still having a high card in play!

 

Rig the deck also gives you control over the black joker for 1 important action! Lynch activates and you really want his succomb to darkness to go, you know the black joker is not in the first 2 cards and you are okay! or if you want to burn the black joker away you know where he is and won't use an important action on it if you can!

 

Your idea of drawing/discarding is good only when you still have a hand! When you've used your last card, it only becomes a gamble mechanics which I think is useless (no knowledge, no control over anything) while rig the deck is still helpful even without a hand. It is way less strong but at least you know what are the 2 first cards. Exemple, Graves wants to kill enemy master, sadly you have only 2 low in front and your attack will surely not pass. Now you can take a better decision about what to do! If you are in a situation where you were hesitating between killing the master or doing a scheme, now you know you can't kill it. So you are better doing your schemes. Or else if you don't want these 2 cards in defense at enemy next activation put the lowest in front and attack your own model WITHOUT relenting. This way if you've done the math okay you have flipped a very low for you and a low for your other model and now the 2 cards are away for 1 action.

 

I've played over 20 games with Lynch during the Beta and I never was disappointed by rig the deck. It's an awesome ability and a cunning player can use it in a lot of different ways! For me, they truly nailed it for the theme of Lynch! he is a cheating bastard who control cards and his fate in his favour!  

[mattbird]

I've been playing more games lately, so my thoughts have changed a tad: 

Originally I had them thusly:
1. Lynch / Honeypot
2. Shenlong / Monk
3. Yan Lo / Ancestors
4. McCabe / Wastrels
5. Asami / Oni
6.  Mei Feng / Foundry
7. Youko / Qui and Gong
8. Misaki / Blossoms

Current thoughts
1. Shenlong / Monk- Moves up to the top. Good enough where my opponents are sick of playing against him, and he has been put in time out. 
2. Lynch / Honeypot- Down from the top. Still great, but not as flexible or immediately deadly as Shen. 

7. Misaki / Blossoms- I previously discounted her (and Torakage's)  movement shenanigans too much. That and Yamaziko's 6" aura is amazing, especially with made-fast Wouku Raiders. I've also been liking the Katanaka Crime Boss.
8. Youko / Qui and Gong- I have yet to play her, but every time I read the cards I see the crew working less and less. 

[FrostHunter]

After tournament i reamain in my opinion that Lynch is on of the top/best keyword (played against Kaeris, draw 5-5 and 5 rounds, plant exposives, dig their graves, outflank, deliver the message, Claim Jump, Vendetta),

and McCabe (played against TT Yan Lo, win 6-5, 4 rounds, Turf War, Harness the Leyline, Search the Ruins, Outflank, Assasinate, Claim Jump) and Wastrels are also freaking powerful (maybe even more powerful than Honeypot), but thanks to versatile models like tanuki and samurai (he has killed Izamu 2 times, and he was ready to kill him third time after surviving charge from Izamu),

but Youko (against Mah Tucket with Big Brain Brin and 3 roosters, i've lost 2-6 after 5 rounds, Reckoning, Breakthrough, Harness the Leyline, Hold up their forces, Take Prisoner, Deliver the message) struggled a lot, because of lot of positive flips that negated distracted and card manipulation from BBB and lack of my imagination how to bite opponent roster, also i can't see how she could win against Kaeris where almost everything had positive flips from burning or probably any other roster with access with lot of positive flips and good shooting (but against Perdita it worked very, very well). Two trained ninja are probably must take in that situations.

Yan Lo from perspective looks also very, very nice and without ignoring armor and strong shooting i would have a lot of trouble fighting against him and his keyword.

[mattbird]

1 hour ago, FrostHunter said:

Yan Lo from perspective looks also very, very nice and without ignoring armor and strong shooting i would have a lot of trouble fighting against him and his keyword.

100% agree on armor. 

[PirateCaptain]

I think something like this... Qi and Gong is really knew, I'll probably put it High Tier eventually, but I'm just not sure.  Wastrel seems great all ready, and going to just get better if he gets more stuff with the full faction release of Explorers.

Side Note: I just started playing 10Ts, so my opinions are all based on initial thoughts, and are likely to change by the minute

https://tiermaker.com/create/malifaux-keywords-182399

[zavros]

Personally I would go with this. 

Shenlong is absurd and his crew has a lot of good synergies going. They are all effectively DF 7 because of chi.

Asami's summons are strong and you can fit good versatiles in like fuhatsu since the crew doesn't rely on any synergies. 

Yan luo's crew is just good, and yan luo gets mountains of abilities throughout the game making him really strong T3+.

Lynch has a great keyword ability but has trouble dealing with stuff outside their brilliance/tarpit bubble. Mobile crews can work around lynch fairly easily.

Mccabe is a really good master with a solid crew. I wish looted supplies was 2", but glad they changed it from the beta version of base contact. Their activation order gets awkward with hucksters wanting to stay in manipulative and when and where you can toss artifacts between models. 

Foundry is surprisingly mobile in addition to being solid in a fight. I would say anti-armor is a common counter that really hurts what they are doing as they can't work around it as much as yan luo can.

I think youko is absurd against certain crews and not great against others. Depends on how many ways they have to fight over their hand, for ex: sandeep can refill his hand really easy with mantra triggers, but something like basse will struggle hitting your models after you attack their hand.

Misaki's crew has some great mobility and damage potential but not a lot of defenses. Misaki herself is a good aggressor that's both hard to stop and impossible to hit, perfect for getting in and out like an assassin. I think they really excel when there's a lot of blocking terrain or corner deployments making your mobility shine; I also don't think the assassin ability is very good but their shadow marker bonuses are really what its about. 

[CD1248]

I don't think anti-armor is that big of a counter to Foundry. Only Golem, Gamin, and Porkchop have Armor+2, while Kang, Neil, Sparks, and Willie lack it. The honorary second 10T Foundry hench, Minako, also doesn't have armor.

[Mycellanious]

On 9/25/2019 at 9:37 PM, CD1248 said:

I don't think anti-armor is that big of a counter to Foundry. Only Golem, Gamin, and Porkchop have Armor+2, while Kang, Neil, Sparks, and Willie lack it. The honorary second 10T Foundry hench, Minako, also doesn't have armor.

I mostly run Foundry and antiarmor is annoying, but not the end of the world. Most models are only armor 1 and the opponent is likely spending resources to get their armor piercing. In addition the Foundry has muliple types if defensive tech to rely on, HtK, shielded, HtW mostly. Finally, they are real good at picking their fights. All the armor 2 models are also Walking Forge models so they are gonna be near scrap. If the opponent sends his armor piercer to try and kill the metal golem, I can teleport him 12" away and give him Kang (no armor, HtW, Juggernaut) to chew on instead

[mattbird]

Played 5 games with the following Mei list, and liking it greatly: 

Mei
Forgeling
2xGamin
Golem
Kang
Sparks
Rail Worker
Low River Monk

[Yew Arcane]

2 hours ago, mattbird said:

Played 5 games with the following Mei list, and liking it greatly: 

Mei
Forgeling
2xGamin
Golem
Kang
Sparks
Rail Worker
Low River Monk

Rail Workers are amazing. I was playing this weekend and I was put in a situation where I had the opportunity to throw Lord Chompy Bits. I didn't win that game, but that was very much a moral victory.

[Mycellanious]

6 hours ago, mattbird said:

Played 5 games with the following Mei list, and liking it greatly: 

Mei
Forgeling
2xGamin
Golem
Kang
Sparks
Rail Worker
Low River Monk

For me, I look at this list and think "What is Kang doing?" Kang's biggest selling point is his ability to pulse out Focused, but in this crew only really Mei, the Golem, and the Rail Worker benefit from that. I dont use the Gamin to attack all that much (and usually move them before Kang to make Scrap and bait out activations anyway so they arent within 4") and Sparks probably isnt attacking. The way I play, I'd probably swap out one Gamin for  Rail Worker / Survivor or both for Neil Henry + an upgrade, but if you are dead set on including 4 Walking Forge models swapping 1 Gamin for the Mech Porkchop is probably a good option too. With this list I'd probably swap out Kang for a versatile model and keep everything else the same (I could see the Obsidian Statue benefiting from all that Scrap, maybe even a Samurai), but that's just the way that I play. 

Do you mind talking about how you used Kang in this crew?

[frumpypigskin]

21 hours ago, mattbird said:

Played 5 games with the following Mei list, and liking it greatly: 

Mei
Forgeling
2xGamin
Golem
Kang
Sparks
Rail Worker
Low River Monk

Hi @Mattbird,

I always want to put in too many high cost models making for elite crews. I think I might try swapping out Kang for Minako Rei and giving something like this a try for anything but reckoning. All the value 5 as models with a Sparks minefield and him handing out fast 😁

[mattbird]

I'd be hard-pressed to take out Kang. I've found his 4" +focus bubble to be invaluable. The alternate I'd like to try is swapping out the Gamin for Mechanical Porkchop, so I can have 3 Vent Steams going, each with Bombs in their Belly. That combo has proven pretty powerful, and the 2nd Gamin hasn't been as useful- I just haven't needed that much scrap. 

[mattbird]

19 hours ago, Mycellanious said:

For me, I look at this list and think "What is Kang doing?" Kang's biggest selling point is his ability to pulse out Focused, but in this crew only really Mei, the Golem, and the Rail Worker benefit from that. I dont use the Gamin to attack all that much (and usually move them before Kang to make Scrap and bait out activations anyway so they arent within 4") and Sparks probably isnt attacking. The way I play, I'd probably swap out one Gamin for  Rail Worker / Survivor or both for Neil Henry + an upgrade, but if you are dead set on including 4 Walking Forge models swapping 1 Gamin for the Mech Porkchop is probably a good option too. With this list I'd probably swap out Kang for a versatile model and keep everything else the same (I could see the Obsidian Statue benefiting from all that Scrap, maybe even a Samurai), but that's just the way that I play. 

Do you mind talking about how you used Kang in this crew?

As you say, giving out focus turn 1 and 2, then railwalking and attacking turn 2. His attack is actually pretty strong, and he's hard to take out. The ancillary models use focus for defense, mostly. 

Agree re: Porkchop! 

[BigHammer]

Y'all are playing Misaki wrong. I don't know how, because I haven't seen you play her, but she's top tier, easily. Her crew builds are flexible enough to cover almost any strat/scheme pool, Ototo is a beast of a beat stick with excellent mobility and manliness, and Wokou Raiders and Torakage are some of the best models in the game at what they do. When you look at all the other last blossom models out there, they all fill a role that many other factions have to reach out of keyword to get. There's anti-scheme tech and irreducible damage (archers), long range firepower (snipers), anti-charge tech (yamaziko/bosses), card draw (bosses), soft obeys (bosses) and a heck of a lot of damage on all of it.

She and Yan Lo are my top tier in Thunders. Asami and Shenlong are likely up there too, due to sheer flexibility of crew build and some powerful abilities and actions, but Katanaka Misaki is in charge of the ten thunders for a reason.

[Cursed25]

6 hours ago, BigHammer said:

Y'all are playing Misaki wrong. I don't know how, because I haven't seen you play her, but she's top tier, easily. Her crew builds are flexible enough to cover almost any strat/scheme pool, Ototo is a beast of a beat stick with excellent mobility and manliness, and Wokou Raiders and Torakage are some of the best models in the game at what they do. When you look at all the other last blossom models out there, they all fill a role that many other factions have to reach out of keyword to get. There's anti-scheme tech and irreducible damage (archers), long range firepower (snipers), anti-charge tech (yamaziko/bosses), card draw (bosses), soft obeys (bosses) and a heck of a lot of damage on all of it.

She and Yan Lo are my top tier in Thunders. Asami and Shenlong are likely up there too, due to sheer flexibility of crew build and some powerful abilities and actions, but Katanaka Misaki is in charge of the ten thunders for a reason.

Misaki can be really strong but her crew needs more finesse and experience than Shenlong or Yan Lo for example! Since they are glass canons every mistake hurts a lot more than other top tier crews in TT! I think Lynch is also top tier but he also needs a little more finesse like Misaki!

[DeleteAccount]

I don't see why you cannot just dip into our versatile arsenal with Misaki though. I mean, yes, they are frail, but we got Samurai if you want to bring some armor and ranged support in a single package that also happens to bring some anti armor. No, they don't bring any synergy with her markers, but it's not that much of a deal as long as you have somebody in the crew that uses them beside Misaki (Minako, Torakage or Crime Bosses)

I have been playing Misaki recently and been very pleasently surprised with her. I don't put much stock on the ranged part of the theme, but the Crime Bosses are pure gold (though a bit frail) and Torakage are a ton better than the initial credit I gave them (though Minako's Katashiro kind of steal their thunder). It does mean that a pure Last Blossom is going to be very frail, but who said you have to stick to pure theme?

[Cursed25]

15 hours ago, Razhem said:

I don't see why you cannot just dip into our versatile arsenal with Misaki though. I mean, yes, they are frail, but we got Samurai if you want to bring some armor and ranged support in a single package that also happens to bring some anti armor. No, they don't bring any synergy with her markers, but it's not that much of a deal as long as you have somebody in the crew that uses them beside Misaki (Minako, Torakage or Crime Bosses)

I have been playing Misaki recently and been very pleasently surprised with her. I don't put much stock on the ranged part of the theme, but the Crime Bosses are pure gold (though a bit frail) and Torakage are a ton better than the initial credit I gave them (though Minako's Katashiro kind of steal their thunder). It does mean that a pure Last Blossom is going to be very frail, but who said you have to stick to pure theme?

You can't do a keyword power rankings by including versatile models because yes Samurai helps a lot Last Blossom, but they also help every other keywords!

 

Last blossom can be a fun and strong keyword!  And we have pretty amazing versatile models (tanuki and Samurai mainly) who can help them a lot! But I'm using these models with all our keywords. So if we compare last blossom only models with other keywords only models, I don't think they are as strong as our top tier ones! (Monk, Ancestor, Honeypot for me)

[DeleteAccount]

35 minutes ago, Cursed25 said:

You can't do a keyword power rankings by including versatile models because yes Samurai helps a lot Last Blossom, but they also help every other keywords!

 

Last blossom can be a fun and strong keyword!  And we have pretty amazing versatile models (tanuki and Samurai mainly) who can help them a lot! But I'm using these models with all our keywords. So if we compare last blossom only models with other keywords only models, I don't think they are as strong as our top tier ones! (Monk, Ancestor, Honeypot for me)

Ok, thought this allowed splicing things. In that context, yeah, Last Blossom is pretty meh

[Adran]

10 hours ago, Cursed25 said:

You can't do a keyword power rankings by including versatile models because yes Samurai helps a lot Last Blossom, but they also help every other keywords!

What is the value of a keyword power list if it's not actually based on the lists you'd use in a game?

[Mycellanious]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

What is the value of a keyword power list if it's not actually based on the lists you'd use in a game?

While initially I kind of agreed with the sentiment, I feel like it sets a poor precedent, particularly since M3E is focused on Keyword over Faction. To put it another way, a Keywork ranking system involving Versatile models, isnt a Keyword ranking system. This kind of thinking leads to under-powered Keywords. I understand that likely you mean a mostly in Keyword crew with a few OOK options, but by this current standard the Wildfire list, which is just Kaeris, the Totem, 2 Arachnid Swarms, 2 Soulstone Miners, and the Arcane Emissary is a very strong "Wildfire crew," which actually sees a lot of play, and could be used as evidence to claim that the "Wildfire Keyword" is high tier, even though the list only contains 2 Wildfire models. Similarly I assume every Arcanist theme in M2E was equally strong because they all contained Joss and Howard Langston, or every Resser crew is equally strong because they all contain Archie or Seamus as a 2nd master. So while yes, it is important to take into consideration clever use of Versatile or OOK models within a Keyword, it is also important to have a discussion about Keywords excluding Versatile or OOK models. 

[Cursed25]

3 hours ago, Adran said:

What is the value of a keyword power list if it's not actually based on the lists you'd use in a game?

When I'm comparing keywords I'm looking at specific models in the crew! do they have good scheme runners? good resilience or good dmg? special abilities that sets them apart? synergies? etc...

 

Like @Mycellanious said, if the only way to play a master/keyword is to take almost no in-keyword models I don't think it's a good keyword. The best example right now in M3e is Redchapel in Ressers! Seamus is really strong but his crew is garbage! So do you consider a list with Seamus and 90% OOK models a Redchapel keyword list? and if yes, do you think Redchapel is a strong keyword? My opinion is no to these 2 questions and this is why in a power ranking list we need to stay mostly in keyword because every masters can take any models they want in the faction and this becomes way harder to determine who are strong/weak if every crews looks the same.

But this is true these OOK models can sometime help a lot a certain keyword to win or play well. (Tannen with Youko for example) I often take some versatile/OOK in my lists but most of the time they are not what defines the playstyle of how the keyword plays. They are more a way to tailor the list to the opponent and strat/schemes.

[Starrius]

So far from  playing qi and gong  I feel the keyword is very versatile and I'm quite happy with it for most schemes

[Adran]

I guess it depends on what you want to get from the ranking.  I never declare Keyword in the game, but I do declare Leader, so if you're question is "which master is going to win me a game" then you should include Versatile. If your question is "i'm going to start this game with 1 crew, and I'm likely to want to use only a small pool of models" then basing it on just keyword models is much more useful (although  that sort of assumes you would just base your purchases on the keyword and nothing else, which is a strange way to do it).

I suppose it could be a list for the benefit of the designers, into which keywords don't work as well entirely on their own right and so need either Errata or New models to make them work right, but I don't think that was the Original posters intent.

.

I know there were people saying (during the beta) Plague was a poor keyword because it didn't have a beater in it, which I think is completely the wrong way to look at it, especially when the outcast faction has a wide range of Beaters they could take. So I don't think its essential that Plague have a beater in keyword.

Then the Seamus/Redchapel is possibly the other extreme, in that lists full of Redchapel keyword may be bad, but you can make good lists with Seamus as your master.

 

I will also say I seem more happy than most to hire out of Keyword, so that probably influences how I would expect to treat this sort of ranking.

7 hours ago, Cursed25 said:

 So do you consider a list with Seamus and 90% OOK models a Redchapel keyword list? and if yes, do you think Redchapel is a strong keyword? My opinion is no to these 2 questions and this is why in a power ranking list we need to stay mostly in keyword because every masters can take any models they want in the faction and this becomes way harder to determine who are strong/weak if every crews looks the same.

I just don't think in terms of a "redchapel list" for anything at the moment. Its a "Seamus" list if its led by Seamus regardless of it having no other redchapel models or entirely redchapel models. That could easily be me.

People didn't seem to have any problems in M2e determining strong and weak masters when they could field exactly the same lists. Its much less likely that the lists now will look the same.  I'm sure they will be able to do the same here, but we might need to make sure we have the same standards/requirements when we start.