Hired Swords- a Viktorias tactica

[Adran]

39 minutes ago, Gheist said:

Yeah that kind of nails it although then we are talking everything up to 6 health without Armor/incorp/HTW/HTK

So: what would be the solution? i think hard to kill for everyone is kinda... flavourless?

I think i'd like to see the +to damage on focus dropped to be honest, because it's to much of a no brainer in so many ways. I think +1 to stat would be more interesting because it would bring the card mechanic back into the picture again.

4SS models often suffer from 1 more thing for me which is: they must be damn good for me to even consider leaving a named character i read all the stories of at home. I know, not very mechanic oriented, but am i the only one feeling that way?

Its hard to change much on this without doing a fairly major re-balance of the rules. Probably the best way I can think of is to give a strategy that promotes having a larger crew than your opponent. Although exactly how to do that with the current style is a little harder. 

Back on the mercenaries. I think that they end up doing slightly more damage on average by having rapid fire than they would by having 2/3/5 damage track and no rapid fire, but it is costing you a card to do so. (based on as many shots as possible. That improvement would go up if you used 1 action to do anything else.)

[Gheist]

5 hours ago, Adran said:

Its hard to change much on this without doing a fairly major re-balance of the rules. Probably the best way I can think of is to give a strategy that promotes having a larger crew than your opponent. Although exactly how to do that with the current style is a little harder. 

Back on the mercenaries. I think that they end up doing slightly more damage on average by having rapid fire than they would by having 2/3/5 damage track and no rapid fire, but it is costing you a card to do so. (based on as many shots as possible. That improvement would go up if you used 1 action to do anything else.)

Guess it would take multiple strategy markers which require multiple models next to them to get scored or manipulated. Not that hard to do.

Not sure on the math of 2/3/5 vs 1/3/5 w Rapidfire.

Only 1/3/5 automatically reads focus ---> Shoot to me, which would give me an i don't care attack for a bad card afterwards

It's not so bad for 4 SS provided you keep you opponent to busy to think about them. Still i guess to come back to Viks, Ronin are sooooooooooooooo good for their cost, i guess thats where the mercs lose out.

[Adran]

25 minutes ago, Gheist said:

Guess it would take multiple strategy markers which require multiple models next to them to get scored or manipulated. Not that hard to do.

Not sure on the math of 2/3/5 vs 1/3/5 w Rapidfire.

Only 1/3/5 automatically reads focus ---> Shoot to me, which would give me an i don't care attack for a bad card afterwards

It's not so bad for 4 SS provided you keep you opponent to busy to think about them. Still i guess to come back to Viks, Ronin are sooooooooooooooo good for their cost, i guess thats where the mercs lose out.

You are probably right about focus, but for mathematics purposes I looked at the likely damage from a negative flip from a fresh deck, and it was 1.9 vs 2.5 per attack, and 3 lots of 1.9 is higher than 2 lots of 2.5. 

2/3/5 is probably focus territory as well, and then you care a lot less about the weak damage if you intend to cheat it. 

Cheating cards is really hard to account for so I don't.

Possibly their biggest problem is the ronin is so much more for only2 stones more. 

[Azahul]

1 hour ago, Gheist said:

Guess it would take multiple strategy markers which require multiple models next to them to get scored or manipulated. Not that hard to do.

Previous editions have had strategies where you score by controlling table quarters, which you control by having more models in than your opponent. That would translate across to this edition just fine (especially if summoned models were excluded).

[touchdown]

12 minutes ago, Azahul said:

Previous editions have had strategies where you score by controlling table quarters, which you control by having more models in than your opponent. That would translate across to this edition just fine (especially if summoned models were excluded).

You'd be better off hiring the Malifaux Child and Effigy, saving a stone, and a getting models that are more durable and do more useful things if you needed 2 cheap models to stand in a place.

[Azahul]

30 minutes ago, touchdown said:

You'd be better off hiring the Malifaux Child and Effigy, saving a stone, and a getting models that are more durable and do more useful things if you needed 2 cheap models to stand in a place.

Oh I wasn't suggesting this as a fix to Mercenaries specifically, just an example of a strategy emphasising lower cost models.

[Maniacal_cackle]

11 hours ago, Gheist said:

On the other hand i guess nobody really has played them much because i would be interested how often moderate damage would come up if you just position two mercs and keep shooting. Anybody ever done that before complaining? i didn't

Moderate damage on a single negative should be 40% of the time, from memory. So if you do two hits on a single negative, that's something like a 74% chance of doing moderate damage on at least one of the attacks.

Not to mention the possibility of focus, etc.

So looking at the math of the models, if they're taking enough shots, they should be doing some serious work. One downside though is they can be cancelled out by your opponent cheating - which is nice, cuz it is card drain. But they're draining your hand too.

[Maniacal_cackle]

So I think Desperate mercs are probably fantastic in situations where you want to gunline.

But... How often do you want to gunline, and how many gunline situations are you declaring Viktorias?

[touchdown]

37 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

So I think Desperate mercs are probably fantastic in situations where you want to gunline.

But... How often do you want to gunline, and how many gunline situations are you declaring Viktorias?

Almost any decent gun in the game can lucky moderate into a 1 shot kill on them. Then you're just giving up activation control.

[Maniacal_cackle]

34 minutes ago, touchdown said:

Almost any decent gun in the game can lucky moderate into a 1 shot kill on them. Then you're just giving up activation control.

I don't think most decent (or even good) guns can hit a desperate merc that is 14 inches away in one AP. Manos, Mad Dog, Anna, Basse, Envy, Francois, etc all can't hit a desperate merc from 14 inches away with a single AP (although some can do it with a bonus and an AP, that's still a tall order for them).

On top of that, when I've lost to 4 stone models, it is typically because the rest of the enemy crew is putting so much pressure on me that I can't stop to deal with a 4 stone model. Sure, Mad Dog COULD walk + charge + walk out in to kill your desperate mercenary first activation to secure activation control, but then he is going to take an entire turn of retaliation for his efforts.

[Azahul]

10 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I don't think most decent (or even good) guns can hit a desperate merc that is 14 inches away in one AP. Manos, Mad Dog, Anna, Basse, Envy, Francois, etc all can't hit a desperate merc from 14 inches away with a single AP (although some can do it with a bonus and an AP, that's still a tall order for them).

On top of that, when I've lost to 4 stone models, it is typically because the rest of the enemy crew is putting so much pressure on me that I can't stop to deal with a 4 stone model. Sure, Mad Dog COULD walk + charge + walk out in to kill your desperate mercenary first activation to secure activation control, but then he is going to take an entire turn of retaliation for his efforts.

Fun fact, Disguised prevents you from Run and Gunning a Desperate Merc, so Charging can't be part of Mad Dog's plan there. 

[touchdown]

No instead mad dog runs and guns another model then uses his 2nd or 3rd ap to casually shoot the Merc

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 minute ago, Azahul said:

Fun fact, Disguised prevents you from Run and Gunning a Desperate Merc, so Charging can't be part of Mad Dog's plan there. 

Oh yeah, awesome xD

The bigger problem is they need to be able to stand somewhere that people don't want to be, but shoot somewhere people do want to be.

Something like Break the Line would be PERFECT - except the markers are concealing. Really that's a struggle for most types of guns in Malifaux, but especially so in this season. All 4 strategies interfere with guns via cover or concealment.

[Trample]

I tried the new Viks out for the first time tonight and didn't include Desperate Mercenaries!

They are pretty brutal beaters. Since it was corner I was able to put down 3 scheme markers within range of the Viks before they activated - two by placing and one with the Emissary. They were able to pick up those scheme markers to get a RJ, 13, and 9 with claim the bounty! They then walk/charged (starting 6" up with battle tempo and the emissary's push and getting move 7" from the emissary's aura) and took out Black Betty turn one (playing OG Asami). They killed a samurai turn 2 and we called it at the end of turn 2 since his crew was melting (he also lost 3 yokai - one to a ronin, one to vanessa, and other to flicker). It was rough. 

I brought a scavenger to add focused to the Viks. They really like that spike damage. Their attack (6+ with crit strike, sweeping strike, and 3/4/6) is almost identical to Fuhatsu's gun, and we know how good that is. They aren't ranged obviously, but have a lot more survivability than the OG Viks. 

My list - Viks, Student, Ronin + Wanted Crimal x2, Vanessa, Scavenger, Emissary, 9 stones. 

I think they're the real deal. 

 

[touchdown]

Did you use the thousand cuts action at all?

[Zebo]

6 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Moderate damage on a single negative should be 40% of the time, from memory. So if you do two hits on a single negative, that's something like a 74% chance of doing moderate damage on at least one of the attacks.

Yeah. I'm quite sure this is not true. 

 

Ot maybe I've got the worst luck in the world, because I can be hitting moderates with negative flips like once or twice a game, and I've got more games without a single moderate than games with 3+.

[Adran]

1 hour ago, Zebo said:

Yeah. I'm quite sure this is not true. 

 

Ot maybe I've got the worst luck in the world, because I can be hitting moderates with negative flips like once or twice a game, and I've got more games without a single moderate than games with 3+.

Its not quite right.

For a negative flip on a fresh deck its roughly

Weak is 58%, 

Moderate is 30%

Severe is 4.6%

Black is 3.7%

Red is 3.6%

Of course, the fact my main opponent does severe on negative flips more often than weak means someone else needs the bad luck...

(I then multiply each value by the damage that level causes to get the average damage caused by a hit, which for the 1/3/5 rifle gives  an average of 1.9 damage per hit. The value differs if you include straight flips and double negative flips, but you also need to calculate the likelihood that you are on that flip which changes based on the stats of the two sides, so I just directly compare the damage flip values to give me a rough comparison. )

[Adran]

11 hours ago, Azahul said:

Previous editions have had strategies where you score by controlling table quarters, which you control by having more models in than your opponent. That would translate across to this edition just fine (especially if summoned models were excluded).

This edition so far all strategies have been a form of incremental scoring, so each point is slightly harder than the last point. Its a bit harder to make Reconnoitre fit that frame work without making the first 2 points fairly trivial. They might change the template for strategies to fit older styles, because they could work in this edition, but it would be a change of direction. 

[Trample]

8 hours ago, touchdown said:

Did you use the thousand cuts action at all?

Not this game. First turn I activated last and used Bounty. I also activated a bit later (probably mid turn) in T2 and charged a samurai. I killed him with 2 AP and was sitting in spot where no one was coming in on them, so with my remaining AP I could either focus or walk and turn on the aura or drop a scheme marker and use bounty again. Since I burned my hand taking out the samurai I chose the latter. 

I do like it on paper. We'll see if it comes up next time. 

[Gheist]

5 hours ago, Zebo said:

Yeah. I'm quite sure this is not true. 

 

Ot maybe I've got the worst luck in the world, because I can be hitting moderates with negative flips like once or twice a game, and I've got more games without a single moderate than games with 3+.

Don't worry my Girlfriend can hit moderate on negative reliably 9 times out of 10

 

51 minutes ago, Trample said:

Not this game. First turn I activated last and used Bounty. I also activated a bit later (probably mid turn) in T2 and charged a samurai. I killed him with 2 AP and was sitting in spot where no one was coming in on them, so with my remaining AP I could either focus or walk and turn on the aura or drop a scheme marker and use bounty again. Since I burned my hand taking out the samurai I chose the latter. 

I do like it on paper. We'll see if it comes up next time. 

how did you take out a samurai with 2 ap? apart from your opponont having no severe cards.

How much focus did you have?

[ShinChan]

15 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Moderate damage on a single negative should be 40% of the time, from memory. So if you do two hits on a single negative, that's something like a 74% chance of doing moderate damage on at least one of the attacks.

No, you're messing with probabilities there in a bad way. First of all, the chances of getting a moderate of higher with a negative flip is around 35% with a 54 cards deck, so you're quite close there. However, the chances of getting one in 2 flips are not even close to a 74%.

[Adran]

1 hour ago, ShinChan said:

No, you're messing with probabilities there in a bad way. First of all, the chances of getting a moderate of higher with a negative flip is around 35% with a 54 cards deck, so you're quite close there. However, the chances of getting one in 2 flips are not even close to a 74%.

The odds to get better than weak are nearly40%, so it you have 2 attacks then the odds of at least one of those two being better than weak is about 60%

( If you want more precision then it's 38% chance of moderate or better and so 60.8% chance that at least one flip in two is better than moderate)

[Maniacal_cackle]

4 hours ago, ShinChan said:

No, you're messing with probabilities there in a bad way. First of all, the chances of getting a moderate of higher with a negative flip is around 35% with a 54 cards deck, so you're quite close there. However, the chances of getting one in 2 flips are not even close to a 74%.

Adran got more specific with numbers since I was being lazy with numbers, and may be including the red joker? I was doing it from memory and knew 40% was roughly right xD

So yeah, 60% is closer to the real number (not sure if he included red jokers).

That said, the point remains - 4 damage from two mercenary hits on a single neg is more likely than 2 damage from two mercenary hits on a single neg. People just underestimate how often you see two moderate+ in a row.

[Trample]

12 hours ago, Gheist said:

how did you take out a samurai with 2 ap? apart from your opponont having no severe cards.

How much focus did you have?

Only 1. I did have severe cards, I'm not sure if he did. I think I had 3 going in on him. He only has the defense 4 either way. I burned them in the attack, which is why I was looking to refill after. I used the focus on the first attack and cheated severe (I had a silly hand from round 1) and had a single ram for 7 (reduced to 5). I stoned for a ram on the second attack and cheated a ram in the attack to ensure the kill. 

[Zebo]

Man, I really don't understand maths. 

 

If one deck is 54 cards, and 20 of them are weaks, aren't weaks like almost 38% of the deck? 

And, if you flip two cards, aren't the chances of flipping at least one weak lile double (75%)?