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Hired Swords- a Viktorias tactica


Rygnan

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3 hours ago, Zebo said:

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%)?

Sorry to say you are right. You don't understand maths.

There are 54*53 different combinations of flipping 2 cards (2862)(2182 I think from memory). 

From there there are 20*19 combinations with 2 weak, 20*20 + 20*20 combinations of weak and moderate, 20*12 + 12*20 combinations of weak and severe , but there are still 20*19 combinations of 2 moderate and 20*12 + 12*20 combinations of moderate and severe. 

When dealing with probability its often worth checking all options and checking your total probability is 1(100%). If it'd not either you missed something or you have the wrong calculations. 

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10 hours ago, Trample said:

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. 

thats why you always take silent proteector on those samurai :D

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On 10/14/2021 at 4:14 PM, Zebo said:

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%)?

Yeah, that's a common mistake, but easy to disprove. By that reasoning, if you flip 3 cards, you have a greater than 100% chance of flipping a weak, and it's not hard to know that's just wrong.

When you are flipping multiple cards, and you want to know the chance of at least one card being an X, you find the chance of it happening once (in this case, 38%), subtract it from 100, and square/cube/quad it, then subtract that from 100.

Think of it this way, if you want all of the cards to be X, you find the chance it'll happen, square/cube/quad it. When you're needing at least one of something, you're instead needing to find the chance you get zero, and anything that's not in that percentage, is a miss.

It's a little more complicated with cards than dice, because there's other factors at play (each card drawn changes the variable on each future card, ie, your first two cards are Severes, the odds of the third being a severe arrest than if your first two cards are Weak), and the fact that at least some cards are already known most of the time (rare you're drawing off the top with no hand or discard).

But given the number of cards, unless you've burnt through a significant portion of the deck, the numbers aren't going to change much. The difference between say 47% and 53% is statistically significant. But in a game, it's basically a coinflip.

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On 10/12/2021 at 5:53 AM, Adran said:

Low cost models have an intrinsic problem, they have to be less good than higher cost models.

There are typically 3 different ways that power is expressed - Offensive power, defensive power or support.

You probably need to drop in at least 2 of the 3 ways. The problem for a Combat model is that Offensive power without defensive power just gets you killed, and defensive power without offensive power just gets you written off as no more than a nuisence. So its models that drop in both but still can be useful that are seen. (Healers/buffers, or models that rely on mobility are probably the  most common)

The pass token is part of it, but I still think the biggest culprit is Focus, and the ability to keep it from turn to turn, meaning that 6 damage in a single action is fairly easy to arrange (especially when you include the charge change), so anything below that is likely to not do much if it gets threatened. 

The problem is that 4 stone models are usually dropped in 6+ ways, because Wyrd blatantly did not do the math.  For instance, take defense.  Sue is an 8 stone model with 8 wounds, 5/6 defenses, and Hard to Kill.  Desperate Mercenaries are 4 stones, so they should have half the defenses right?  Nope, they're 4/4, 4 wounds, and nothing else.  That's three different ways the defenses are nerfed.  They're not "half as durable", they are more like "one quarter as durable". 

What about offense?  Sue is 3/4/5, stat 5+.  Broken Down rifle is 1/3/5 stat 5.  So that's half the damage, and hits less (so that's not half the damage, that's more like one quarter).  Sue also has utility through FIstful of Scrip on kills (another way cheap easy to kill models are hurting you).  In addition Sue can hit another ram for 4/5/6 damage track.   

That is six separate nerfs to them as a strict combat model, without looking at utility (which sue again wins at).  What do they look like with two nerfs? 

Fixed Desperate Mercenary: Df 5, 5 wounds, hard to wound, 2/3/4 damage track, hits on a 5, ignore cover/concealment (wash with plus flip), and the tome trigger is a straight draw

There'd still be game rules that would make it better to have 1 big model vs. 2, but at least they'd be competitive.  The desperate mercanries here could fight at about half Sue's strength.  The problem is that Wyrd just basically math failed with 4 stone models, leaving them hitting half as often for half as much damage as 8 stone models (so one quarter as effective) and having half the health, less defense, and no tech (so dying 3-4x as easily).  They then rewarded players for killing these incredibly fragile models.  You need 2-3 nerfs, they did 5-6. 

You can fix this without changing game rules, you just need to actually calculate what "half as effective" means. 

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7 hours ago, RisingPhoenix said:

The problem is that 4 stone models are usually dropped in 6+ ways, because Wyrd blatantly did not do the math.  For instance, take defense.  Sue is an 8 stone model with 8 wounds, 5/6 defenses, and Hard to Kill.  Desperate Mercenaries are 4 stones, so they should have half the defenses right?  Nope, they're 4/4, 4 wounds, and nothing else.  That's three different ways the defenses are nerfed.  They're not "half as durable", they are more like "one quarter as durable". 

What about offense?  Sue is 3/4/5, stat 5+.  Broken Down rifle is 1/3/5 stat 5.  So that's half the damage, and hits less (so that's not half the damage, that's more like one quarter).  Sue also has utility through FIstful of Scrip on kills (another way cheap easy to kill models are hurting you).  In addition Sue can hit another ram for 4/5/6 damage track.   

That is six separate nerfs to them as a strict combat model, without looking at utility (which sue again wins at).  What do they look like with two nerfs? 

Fixed Desperate Mercenary: Df 5, 5 wounds, hard to wound, 2/3/4 damage track, hits on a 5, ignore cover/concealment (wash with plus flip), and the tome trigger is a straight draw

There'd still be game rules that would make it better to have 1 big model vs. 2, but at least they'd be competitive.  The desperate mercanries here could fight at about half Sue's strength.  The problem is that Wyrd just basically math failed with 4 stone models, leaving them hitting half as often for half as much damage as 8 stone models (so one quarter as effective) and having half the health, less defense, and no tech (so dying 3-4x as easily).  They then rewarded players for killing these incredibly fragile models.  You need 2-3 nerfs, they did 5-6. 

You can fix this without changing game rules, you just need to actually calculate what "half as effective" means. 

I disagree with your calculations as to half durabiltiy and half damage. Yes there are certainly many circumstances where it is easier to kill 2 Desperate Mercs than it is to kill sue, but there are also circumstances where it is easier to kill sue than 2 desperate mercs (fewer circumstances but there are certainly some).  Can not be charged is certainly some form of defense  (especially when combined with the ability to move during the start phase each turn). 

The loose claim that 5+ hits twice as often as 5 does not sound true.  Working out what is the likely damage is fairly complex because it involves making assumptions on how many resources you are prepared to put into the attack, and it does also depend on what you are shooting at. 

If you calculate maximum (without joker) damage Sue is at best 12 damage. 2 Mercs is at best 30 damage. Plus the mercs are better with regards to both jokers, in that a red joker helps them more and a black joker penalises them less. The likelyhood of that 30 damage is hugely low, I completely agree, but if you need to do 16 damage in a turn for some reason, then Sue has 0 % chance    The Two Mercs are probably in the region of only 1 % chance, (gut guess) but that is still a chance. Also if you're trying to Kill Sue, there is nearly 0% chance(you could get the hard to kill damage with the bonus if you are close enough) of Sue doing it in 1 turn. There is a reasonably high chance (maybe 10-15%) of 2 Mercs doing it.  

 

I agree that Wyrd got the maths wrong overall on the balance of 4ss models, but I also think that during the beta testing, most players were still playing with a M2e mindset where extra activations was very good, so the data being received was partially flawed because people played the game differently then to how it is being played now.  2 small models are not as good this edition as they were in previous editions, but it took people a while to realise how much worse they are. I'm not sure that I agree with your numbers, but I agree with the general intent that they were made too weak. 

I would like a change to improve smaller models in general. I don't know if it is the case you need to just errata a wide range of cheap models, or if there is a simple "general" rule change that would work. Making some VPs be based on the number of models on the table would certainly help power them up, and that is something that hasn't been done this edition, but was one of their strengths in other editions (so I certainly know when I did 3rd edition beta testing I considered that this might be the case in the future, and sort of included in in my valuation, which, as well as not fully realising the downsides to the new focus rules, or maximising the power of the pass token will mean that my testing would have given results that slightly powered up my view of the cheaper models than they are now). 

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Adran said:

I disagree with your calculations as to half durabiltiy and half damage. Yes there are certainly many circumstances where it is easier to kill 2 Desperate Mercs than it is to kill sue, but there are also circumstances where it is easier to kill sue than 2 desperate mercs (fewer circumstances but there are certainly some).  Can not be charged is certainly some form of defense  (especially when combined with the ability to move during the start phase each turn). 

The loose claim that 5+ hits twice as often as 5 does not sound true.  Working out what is the likely damage is fairly complex because it involves making assumptions on how many resources you are prepared to put into the attack, and it does also depend on what you are shooting at.

 

There is some terrible math in here, .  Desperate mercenaries hitting 6 severes is so incredibly unlikely that it beggers belief.  Due to how malifaux duels work, their damage flips are almost certainly on a :-flipmeaning they'd have to flip 12 severes to get there.  There are literally only 13 severes in the ENTIRE DECK.  Worse, this eats into your hit chance - because boy, you're not flipping a severe to hit, are you?  This isn't dice, it's simply not mathematically possible.  Assuming you did do that, it'd be awful anyway.  Your deck would be so severely negative (pun intended) you'd lose every flip for the rest of the turn. 

Moreover, if you're so scared of the "30 damage" nonsense, my fixed desperate mercenaries can only output 24.  Therefore they're clearly severely nerfed from the 30 damage ones.  And if you believe my Desperate Mercs have a worse statline because their max damage dropped from 30 to 24, well... um... well, lets just say everyone is entitled to their opinions, but some opinions are fucking wrong,. and that'd be one of them.

So now that we've debunked your math, lets do some real math.  The odds of Sue hitting a desperate mercenary on a straight flip (ignore cover/concealment) are, ignoring jokers, are 84.7%.  The odds of a desperate mercenary hitting Sue are 54%. 

Desperate Mercenary Dmg/attack (vs Sue): 1.1

Sue Dmg vs. Desp. Merc: 2.7

Again, this is ignoring cover and concealment, but you can see here that Sue outputs ~240% of the damage of a desperate mercenary.  In addition, less execute triggers, there is nothing in the entire game that will kill Sue that will not ALSO kill two desperate mercenaries.  You would need to do 8 damage ignoring Hard to Kill, and I will confidently state that even with Red Jokers stacking 8 damage with something that ignores Hard to Kill is gonna be dumb shenanigans you can't pull off on the tabletop.  In reality, 6 is the true cap on damage.  Not only is it harder to deal 6 to sue (df 5 vs 4), it'd still take two more attacks to kill him - attacks that would almost certainly kill a desperate mercenary. 

And by the way, thanks to having a finite hand size it is much better to cheat with high damage models like Sue than it is low damage models.  So hands favor elite crews.  Spending a card on Rapid Fire is terrible.  It's 1.1 extra damage for a card, which is comparable to cheating out a ram on a crit strike duel that you're already winning - something you only do if it guaranteed kills them (and trust me, Desp. Mercs hitting is not guaranteed at all). If spare cards are a resource you typically have in abundance maybe it's fine, but again this strikes me as "a game that is not Malifaux" - I typically do not end my turns with a plethora of cards I never got to use.

Summary: The math is exactly as dire as I said it is, my fixed desperate mercenaries can about keep up with Sue (1.4 ave damage, similarly hard to remove), and you really shouldn't "make assumptions" about mathematics.  Mathematics is hard to make assumptions about, and as Zebo just demonstrated, you make mistakes with it. 

  

4 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Also 2 models vs 1 comparison has to take into account the two small models have double the AP.

That extra ap is generally where I would attempt to leverage a 4-cost model. Break the line I quite commonly see 4-cost models do solid work against melee crews.

 

This is largely irrelevant to the analysis.  Yes, two small models have double the AP.  They offer double the kill targets for strats where that matters. They drop double the corpse markers.  They cost you activation control.  They're extremely inefficient to cheat with compared to big models.  They make you more vulnerable to blasts and shockwaves.  Etc.

These are tradeoffs.  Tradeoffs are what list building is about, you want there to be tradeoffs when you consider models.  Some tradeoffs favor big models (cheating, activation control), some tradeoffs favor small models (scheming, etc.)

Unfortunately for damage, there's no real tradeoff.  Were Malifaux plagued by swarms of 1 wound models that could spread out beyond shockwave/blast range, then there'd be a legitimate argument for using cheap models to quickly clear away the swarms with high AP.  But that's not the game we play.  Cheap models and expensive models are all trying to kill targets that typically have at least 5 wounds, usually more.   So in comparing raw damage output, the extra AP is pretty meaningless.  It doesn't enable you to do more killing.  In fact how 4 soulstone models work, they tend to do much less killing with many more flips. 

NB: I am comparing vs. Sue because he's a balanced, shooty model in the same faction for 8 SS.  Sue is not a particularly high or low damage model for his SS cost - dedicated ranged damage dealers like Fuhatsu or Rusty Alyce can hit higher highs than Sue. 

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5 minutes ago, RisingPhoenix said:

Moreover, if you're so scared of the "30 damage" nonsense, my fixed desperate mercenaries can only output 24.  Therefore they're clearly severely nerfed from the 30 damage ones (haha). So now that we've debunked your awful math, lets do some real math.  The odds of Sue hitting a desperate mercenary on a straight flip are, ignoring jokers, are 84.7%.  The odds of a desperate mercenary hitting Sue are 54%. 

Desperate Mercenary Dmg/attack (vs Sue): 1.1

Sue Dmg vs. Desp. Merc: 2.7

Again, this is ignoring cover and concealment, but you can see here that Sue outputs ~240% of the damage of a desperate mercenary.  In addition, less execute triggers, there is nothing in the entire game that will kill Sue that will not ALSO kill two desperate mercenaries.  You would need to do 8 damage ignoring Hard to Kill, and I will confidently state that even with Red Jokers stacking 8 damage with something that ignores Hard to Kill is gonna be dumb shenanigans you can't pull off on the tabletop.  In reality, 6 is the true cap on damage.  Not only is it harder to deal 6 to sue (df 5 vs 4), it'd still take two more attacks to kill him - attacks that would almost certainly kill a desperate mercenary. 

And by the way, thanks to having a finite hand size it is much better to cheat with high damage models like Sue than it is low damage models.  So hands favor elite crews.  Spending a card on Rapid Fire is terrible.  It's 1.1 extra damage for a card, which is comparable to cheating out a ram on a crit strike duel that you're already winning - something you only do if it guaranteed kills them (and trust me, Desp. Mercs hitting is not guaranteed at all). 

Summary: The math is exactly as dire as I said it is, my fixed desperate mercenaries can about keep up with Sue (1.4 ave damage, similarly hard to remove), and you really shouldn't "make assumptions" about mathematics.  Mathematics is hard to make assumptions about, and as Zebo just demonstrated, you make mistakes with it. 

 

I don't have time at the moment to check your maths, so I'm going to assume the numbers you give are right

Based on the numbers you Quote Sue would do 5.4 damage per activation. If you have low cards to discard and no other use for them (not a given, but fairly common in malifaux, certainly more likely than having a decent ram) then the desperate merc can do 3.3 damage per activation.  Even if you only do 1 rapid fire across 2 mercs, then you are doing 5.5 damage for 8 stones. That is slightly more damage than the 5.4 you were getting from Sue (I don't know if you took into account the chance of a random ram on a successful attack, so you might get sue nearer to 5.9 damage if you haven't,). 

On the table top this wouldn't really work, because Sue would typically kill an un activated Merc is he was in range, so the likelihood you are in a situation where 2 mercs both get to activate vs Sue is low.

13 hours ago, RisingPhoenix said:

What about offense?  Sue is 3/4/5, stat 5+.  Broken Down rifle is 1/3/5 stat 5.  So that's half the damage, and hits less (so that's not half the damage, that's more like one quarter).  

What I can't work out is how 2.2 damage per activation can be seen as 1/4 of 5.9 damage per activation, even before you consider the fact that the 2.2 is damage against a harder to hit target, so its supposed to be taking into account both defence and offense penalties. 

The situation is dire and I agree that if you have 8 stones there is almost no reason to take 2 mercs rather than sue, but even based on your numbers it is not as dire as you claim. 

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15 minutes ago, Adran said:

I don't have time at the moment to check your maths, so I'm going to assume the numbers you give are right

Based on the numbers you Quote Sue would do 5.4 damage per activation. If you have low cards to discard and no other use for them (not a given, but fairly common in malifaux, certainly more likely than having a decent ram) then the desperate merc can do 3.3 damage per activation.  Even if you only do 1 rapid fire across 2 mercs, then you are doing 5.5 damage for 8 stones. That is slightly more damage than the 5.4 you were getting from Sue (I don't know if you took into account the chance of a random ram on a successful attack, so you might get sue nearer to 5.9 damage if you haven't,). 

On the table top this wouldn't really work, because Sue would typically kill an un activated Merc is he was in range, so the likelihood you are in a situation where 2 mercs both get to activate vs Sue is low.

What I can't work out is how 2.2 damage per activation can be seen as 1/4 of 5.9 damage per activation, even before you consider the fact that the 2.2 is damage against a harder to hit target, so its supposed to be taking into account both defence and offense penalties. 

The situation is dire and I agree that if you have 8 stones there is almost no reason to take 2 mercs rather than sue, but even based on your numbers it is not as dire as you claim. 

 

I did take into account the random ram, because it's easy to do (25% chance to do 1 extra damage, basically).  I didn't include picking 11R over 12C and such with the positive flip because there's diminishing returns in staring into the math abyss.

I did not consider cheating here.  But I will say that spending a card on the rapid fire is TERRIBLE.  I compared it to spending a card to cheat in a Ram on a crit strike duel (cheating an 8R for an 8C type deal) - something you only do if the extra crit damage kills them 100%.  I shouldn't need to say that a desperate mercenary shot is not a "100% chance" to do anything.  Again, we should confine ourselves to the game of Malifaux we do play - if there was a game where pitching a random card to get a chance to do 1 damage on average were good, they'd be better, but that game fundamentally is not malifaux. 

The floor of "what a card is worth" to me is pitching the card to take a :ToS-Fast:Concentrate and 1 focus is worth way more than 1 damage on average since it's a plus on both the attack and damage flip. 

Quote

What I can't work out is how 2.2 damage per activation can be seen as 1/4 of 5.9 damage per activation, even before you consider the fact that the 2.2 is damage against a harder to hit target, so its supposed to be taking into account both defence and offense penalties. 

Yeah, there's some hyperbole when I said a quarter, because it was "halved times halved".  They really only do about 1/3rd the damage of Sue.  Meaning three of them would be almost worth Sue... if they were also 1/3rd as survivable (which they're really really not). And all for the low, low cost of the Coryphee Duet. 

Again, look at the fixed statline:

Fixed Desperate Mercenary: Df 5, 5 wounds, hard to wound, 2/3/4 damage track, hits on a 5, ignore cover/concealment (wash with plus flip), and the tome trigger is a straight draw

This is probably slightly higher damage than Sue, but made up for by the fact Sue has way more utility while Desperate Mercs really don't (we have been ignoring Sue's auras, scheme marker kill dropping, run and gun mobility, and grit trigger, but they do add up to rather a lot of utility).  They're also more fragile - 5 wounds, hard to wound can still die in a severe although it's slightly harder to focus bomb them to the shadow realm thanks to Hard to Wound.

I know your knee jerk reaction is to think everything I say is wrong because you're probably one of the most contrarian people I've ever interacted with, but take a second look.  It doesn't make them wildly OP.  I doubt it even makes them hired that much more often in the current meta.  What it would do is give them a role and make them not feel awful to put on the tabletop - which is all I ever advocate for a model.  No model should feel bad to put down, and right now 4 SS models are huge offenders in the "putting this on the table is just hurting yourself". 

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just going to repeat that I don't believe it's possible to balance a ranged damage dealer at 4ss. A desperate merc's value should come from having a 20" threat range from their position at the start of the turn. If that threat range was also capable, it would just be too good.

Give them an 8" shotgun with min 2 and more durability and maybe we're talking

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15 hours ago, RisingPhoenix said:

Fixed Desperate Mercenary: Df 5, 5 wounds, hard to wound, 2/3/4 damage track, hits on a 5, ignore cover/concealment (wash with plus flip), and the tome trigger is a straight draw

The fix is to make a 4SS model basically equivalent to, or even possibly better than, a 6SS model (Ronin)? That is the GW method for “balancing”, and it works… never. I think addressing the issue with cheaper models is better addressed by making the GG Strats support more varied styles between them. Elites are so good now because games can be won with fewer Interacts. If GG is balanced to increase the amount of interacts needed in games, damage and defensive profiles become less important.

 

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6 minutes ago, PiersonsMuppeteer said:

The fix is to make a 4SS model basically equivalent to, or even possibly better than, a 6SS model (Ronin)? That is the GW method for “balancing”, and it works… never. I think addressing the issue with cheaper models is better addressed by making the GG Strats support more varied styles between them. Elites are so good now because games can be won with fewer Interacts. If GG is balanced to increase the amount of interacts needed in games, damage and defensive profiles become less important.

 

The strat and scheme issue is more complicated than that. One issue is that the interact schemes are extremely inefficient ap-wise - it takes a dozen AP to get both points of spread them out and only about two AP to deny it. On the other hand research mission and claim Jump exist and they cost basically 0ap - so long as you want to be playing aggressively anyway.

Then there's the way schemes are scored. The eog point requires you to have a contested board presence going into turn five. If you've taken a scheme oriented crew against a murder crew chances are you can't get those last points unless your schemers are also pretty beefy - mech rider, first mate, Lady J.

Lastly the most reliable way to gain control of the last activation is killing unactivated models, so your elite killers who can't be easily one-activationed have like three systemic advantages over other styles of play.

My preferred fix would be to bring back more of the 2e scoring dynamic (schemes are worth up to 3 each, scored in-game) to privilege aggressive evening and hi starting AP. The way more heavy handed approach would be to lower weak damage almost universally to make fighting more in line with scheming as far as AP investment to payoff.

Big caveat, I love the game as is, I'm not trying to bellyache because my preferred approach is a structurally uphill battle.

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1 hour ago, PiersonsMuppeteer said:

The fix is to make a 4SS model basically equivalent to, or even possibly better than, a 6SS model (Ronin)? That is the GW method for “balancing”, and it works… never. I think addressing the issue with cheaper models is better addressed by making the GG Strats support more varied styles between them. Elites are so good now because games can be won with fewer Interacts. If GG is balanced to increase the amount of interacts needed in games, damage and defensive profiles become less important.

 

Ronin are considerably better.  6 wounds, hard to kill is way tougher than 5 wounds hard to wound.  5/HTW is still vulnerable to one shots.  It's not a gimme like it is without HTW, but you can still just hit it and kill them.  They're not going to survive two hits unless your opponent miscalculates badly.  Ronin will almost always survive two hits, or absorb considerable resources.

In addition, Ronin have a way different use case.  They are late activators.  Most models hate activating late, but you can hold off on activating Ronin to see if they get targeted and taken down to HTK.  Then you can activate them, charge them, get in 2-3 attacks with that FANTASTIC blade (that sword is so good) then sac them for 2SS refund.  I will pay the card for an extra attack from a Daito, it's that good of a blade. 

Maybe I pushed them a little too hard, but I am not designing in a vacuum here.  That's exactly what I want to avoid - a lot of M3E was designed in a vacuum and oh boy it shows with similar costed models not being NEARLY as effective.  So where did I borrow my statline from? 

Ygi9xW8.jpeg

Heyo, look at that bad boy.  5 DF, 5 wounds, hard to KILL, and some decent utility and damage potential on top of that. 

Now maybe I agree that a 8" shotgun is probably more thematic than a 14" sniper.  I actually really like that idea.  I honestly haven't found much of a use for 14" guns without ignore cover/concealment - we tend to play with the recommended terrain levels and oh boy are there just not 14" sight lines in my experience.  Nor does a model I potentially want to scheme being 14" away really come in handy.  So yeah, maybe knock them down to an 8" shotgun, that'd be completely reasonable to do with them if you buff them, because a shotgun is way more thematic than a 14" gun (and lets face it - no one was bringing Desperate Mercs, it doesn't matter if we change the gun a bit). 

It's not impossible to have cheap models that fight well.  It just requires you to not nerf the damage and the triggers and the chances to hit, it requires you to not nerf the wounds and the defenses and the protective abilities. 

P.S.  I hate this idea that cheap models should only scheme.  First, that's trying to delete models from the game.  Cheap models are not "scheming only".  There's tons of cheap models that should have combat potential, and others that are pure scheme runners.  Why even have Desperate Mercenaries at all if they're just doing the same thing Big Jake or Winged Plagues?  Why not let them have their own identity? 

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1 hour ago, Thatguy said:

What do you mean?

I mean that it's not why I play the game? It's fine, and when there are points in the balance it comes alive.

But I'm here to chase points. That's what's fun for me. The default pattern of, "Early on snipe the weak models so they can't score the fun schemes, then collapse into a slugfest in the middle so we can ekk out a one point difference on claim Jump," I do not love. There's too much combo-wombo MtG style thinking and not enough tactics-of-maneuver spatial reasoning for me personally to get excited about fighting for the sake of fighting.

In 2e it was probably a little too easy for certain crews to simply decline engagement and force the draw or win on schemes. In 3e it's too easy, imo, to force an engagement at will.

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Malifaux, as a game, is a game with 4 stone models clearly focused around killing.  That's the design, and we're not gonna remove models from the game.  Nor should we effectively remove models from the game by making them so bad they aren't worth taking.

Honestly if point chasing is your preferred style of play, why are you in this thread in particular?  The Viks are not a master known for scoring above all else.  In fact I'd say what they were most known for in 2E is 3-2 games where one side gets tabled by turn 3.  3E has made them slightly more scoring-ish, but they're still a crew that loves to dive and kill, only now they run around and score and then dive and kill when your opponent tries to do the same.  This is a murder crew, through and through. 

This feels like a very weird place to bang your drum.

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Oh, I know what the Viks are. They're pretty fun in third, though I'm not thrilled about their title. In 2e it was impossible to get a good game with them, win or lose it was just an eye roller, but w/e.

What I was saying before I, admittedly, went off topic was that rather than looking at making this one 4ss model do 6ss worth of damage maybe we should look at the structural reasons why such a skin percentage of 4ss models see play. Dropping weak damages across the board, and/or increasing the ability to exert pressure through scoring are both more productive ways to look at improving the relevance of low ss models/so called low value AP.

I'm certain that we won't see anything like my proposed changes in this edition. But desperate mercs aren't getting a redesign either.

  • Agree 1
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