Does Malifaux have a 'pay-to-win' problem?

[The_death_jester]

The flip is of course that Malifaux is a hobby, one people will hopefully be playing for decades of their lives. I have a huge collection but that's been accrued over a period of 10 years or so. Even on a restricted budget of lets say 5 quid a week you are looking at 260 quid per annum which is a substantial amount of models.

So while getting everything at once is hugely expensive 2-3 years of low scale hobbying puts you on par with everyone else if you're consistent and clever with purchases.

 Plus if you think about it, in a good strong scene you'll only be getting good enough after about a year to 18 months to really be competing properly anyway.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Thanks for your input all.

I do think that M3E's design seems prone to gaining an advantage by owning quite a few specialty models (kind of like having an infinite sideoboard in Magic is going to be useful), but can see the reasoning that that advantage is probably:

A. Reasonably small.

B. Subject to quite large diminishing returns.

Still, I hope it doesn't become too common to feel significantly disadvantaged in a matchup due to not owning a specific model (I know a lot of people currently feel disadvantaged  in condition matchups for not being able to field Archie since he seems to have sold out across the globe). Guess we will have to wait and see!

[Hagisman]

I remember hearing about tournaments in the UK that used side boards.

My own experience with Malifaux has been that having a few good answers is better than having the entire faction at your disposal. For instance a few of the top players didn't change their lists much in M2e. I did change my lists a lot to match the scheme pools and to counter my opponent, but I wasn't as nearly as effective as the top players. (I was ranked high, but fell off as I got less and less practice games in)

[Clement]

It's worth pointing out that the Fields of Glory document (TOS version of Gaining Grounds) uses a Garrison system to basically limit the pool to a set collection of stuff (both limiting by total number of points and adding a rare limit since TOS doesn't really have one natively).

It's not beyond the realm of possibility to assume that the new and improved Gaining Grounds when it lands will institute some kind of rule (optional or otherwise) that limits the available pool of models.  "You get 120ss worth of models/upgrades, masters included" kind of thing.  No idea what a reasonable number is though.

[Nikodemus]

12 hours ago, Clement said:

It's worth pointing out that the Fields of Glory document (TOS version of Gaining Grounds) uses a Garrison system to basically limit the pool to a set collection of stuff (both limiting by total number of points and adding a rare limit since TOS doesn't really have one natively).

It's not beyond the realm of possibility to assume that the new and improved Gaining Grounds when it lands will institute some kind of rule (optional or otherwise) that limits the available pool of models.  "You get 120ss worth of models/upgrades, masters included" kind of thing.  No idea what a reasonable number is though.

Local scene here did that some years ago in 2e. I can't remember exact limits, I think a few varieties were tried.

In my experience it didn't really "help" (I don't really see a problem here to start with). People who were playing with 2 crew boxes had ~12 models to play with or whatever, but profile variety wasn't there. People who had big collections might also play the tournament with just 12 figures total, but they didn't have to take any duplicates, effectively allowing them to make much more optimised lists.

I'm not opposed to the idea, but I don't think it benefits much, or even at all. It can easily make more niche models less likely to appear since space is an issue.

edit:

I guess you could limit actual physical release boxes. eg. "Crew box + any 1 keyword expansion box" or some such. Even so you're comparing new people who have possibly quite randomly chosen master vs. a 1e vet with 8 masters worth of keywords to pick from for the tournament. I'm not convinced you can truly equalise the field as such. But I don't think it's particularly necessary either. For reference I'm someone who mained 1-2 masters per faction for all of 2e and for the first fifty odd games of 3e, in a meta filled with more than a few players who have case of "gotta gatch them all" with their respective factions.

[Adran]

13 hours ago, Clement said:

It's worth pointing out that the Fields of Glory document (TOS version of Gaining Grounds) uses a Garrison system to basically limit the pool to a set collection of stuff (both limiting by total number of points and adding a rare limit since TOS doesn't really have one natively).

It's not beyond the realm of possibility to assume that the new and improved Gaining Grounds when it lands will institute some kind of rule (optional or otherwise) that limits the available pool of models.  "You get 120ss worth of models/upgrades, masters included" kind of thing.  No idea what a reasonable number is though.

Fixed pool used to be in Gaining grounds,. but wasn't very popular as an event type I don't think. It also got a little confusing with upgrades and so forth. I'm not sure what year it got removed (I only know it got removed because I just looked at my 2018 document and couldn't see it).

I think they used to recommend pool sizes from 75-150% of crew size.

 

[Hagisman]

There seems to be a lot of culture shock from people who migrate from other game systems with fixed lists. A few people from 40k really like creating all comers lists and will try to stick to that when playing. At least one person I met was kind of upset that list building for the mission was allowed. But he got over that pretty quickly.

[Ogid]

I don't like that much the fixed pool format... it makes the niche masters and models even less likely to be seen.

[Thedeadclaw]

Any of thos fixed pool ideas also absolutely decimate summoners. Really and truly, the best thing to buy if you're making limited purchases is an easy to complete keyword. Kaeris has 4 total purchases. Lady Justice is going to have 3 at the end of November. There are easier masters to buy into and then there are harder ones. (Summoners, Puppets and Mei Feng immediately come to mind.) Finish a crew and then make smart purchases about the versatile models you want before going for a new crew if it's a major concern.

Again, my two favorite crews have access to over 300 soulstones of models without versatile. Some other crews have significantly less. That's not an immediate indicator of power level.

If you're worried about this casually you can always use proxies. If you're worried about it competitively there may be someone that can let you borrow models to fill your collection. (Plenty of us play multiple factions but can't bring them all to a tournament, and would be more than happy to loan out models.) But a lot of the depth of complexity to the game comes from its model pools, which I imagine is why fixed pool got nixed in the first place.

[Adran]

33 minutes ago, Thedeadclaw said:

Any of thos fixed pool ideas also absolutely decimate summoners.  

I haven't looked at pools in M3, but in M2 the summoner did really well in them, because you could summon what you needed, which didn't need to be from your pool of models. 

Keyword hiring does make a huge difference to the need for this sort of format, and even trying to build a pool that lets you cover more than 1 master. 

[yool1981]

Miniature games tend to favour the rich people with a lot of free time.

Rich to get more options. Free time to actually be able to play these options well.

If you don't have any free time, you are unlikely to win tournaments with any miniature game. Malifaux is not different.

If you have free time and use proxies, you can reduce your investment by only purchasing what you need. If you are rich without free time, you will never be good at the game.

I thus don't think there is any pay to win issue.

As to the limited hiring pool, this is imho an aweful idea since it will limit the use of corner case references you may otherwise see from time to time.

When I go to a tournament I very much enjoy playing against things I don't know anything about.

[Thedeadclaw]

OH. See, I've been approaching the whole topic presuming your summons count against your model pool for the event. I think my crews go down to uh... About 161-173 (event dependent) for both crews without summons/replace effects. Which is still pretty high compared to the suggestion but yeah that makes it significantly better.

[Clement]

49 minutes ago, Thedeadclaw said:

Any of thos fixed pool ideas also absolutely decimate summoners.

 

10 minutes ago, Adran said:

I haven't looked at pools in M3, but in M2 the summoner did really well in them, because you could summon what you needed, which didn't need to be from your pool of models. 

Keyword hiring does make a huge difference to the need for this sort of format, and even trying to build a pool that lets you cover more than 1 master. 

Heck, even if we DID limit summons to only from the pool, I don't think it would even be that bad(and I say this as someone who used to run Nicodem primarily).  The variety of models that you can summon has very much gone down this edition.  I don't think there IS a master with grab bags of dudes like there were back in 2e.   The "most variable" summoners have 7-8 things they can summon in (Dashel, Kirai, Sandeep-but-with-more-steps) and it's all their keyword stuff anyway.

Just spit-balling here, but I could see a world where your "arsenal" was maybe something like 2 key words + 30ss worth of "stuff" or something.

[solkan]

 

Quote

Just spit-balling here, but I could see a world where your "arsenal" was maybe something like 2 key words + 30ss worth of "stuff" or something.

Maybe something more like Leader’s keyword(s), versatile, plus one additional keyword plus X models/soulstones.

Because the multiple keyword leaders do sort of deserve to keep their relative benefit.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Totally agree the larger keywords shouldn't suffer.

But also can see it is a new edition, and we should try it unrestricted unless problems develop.

But if every Master X is not viable because of model Y against a faction, and everyone takes that model since there is no restriction.... I think it might be worth revisiting.

That all depends on how strong counter picking is. Like in today's magic it is things like "have a strong effect against this type of deck", whereas early magic was "your opponent is playing one of the five colours? They lose."

Thanks for the feedback all. Will probably post some updated thoughts after a tournament or two.

[Starrius]

As a player with a large collection, and teaching new players you always worry that you will.do something bad like counter picking,  for me the thing I've been enjoying for m3e is keywords, I generally only stick to keywords with generally bearly.needing to use 1 versatile model, my only exception  is with nellie I run an investigator as theme is off but what the model does fits with my crew,  one thing I have noticed is how even by staying in pure keyword all the crews still feel viable and this to me means people on a budget or people who only want to play one master can just get their keyword and still be able to have good games.