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Power level errata?


Maniacal_cackle

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The players on the neighboring island have some pretty competitive tournaments, and I'm just trying to find my right level of casual vs. Competitive play.

To that end, what level of power-level errata do people predict for M3E? Did M2E have frequent power level changes?

The vibe I'm getting is that M2E did errata power level of models reasonably often, and we should expect similar here?

Or does the majority of (predicted) balancing happen through scenarios and schemes?

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3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Did M2E have frequent power level changes?

For the most part, the solution to weak models during M2E was the introduction of corrective upgrades, or new models with sympathetic abilities.

If you want a catalogue of the various "No, that was too good" errata, there were a few changes each year.  (Even if the files aren't available, you should be able to find the errata announcements and nerf discussions.)

I know TOS has gotten essentially distinct "We didn't write these rules properly" and "Power level adjustment" errata so far.  It's likely that the errata expected in January is going to be a combination of the two.

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Typically there were 2 errata's a year during M2E. One would was an end of the year buff/nerf errata for models that were "never take" or "always take" to shake up the meta. The other errata was was a mid summer emergency fix errata meant to change game breaking models that were recently released, this errata wasn't always used and often affected very few models. To my knowledge Wyrd hasn't said anything about what's their plan moving forward, but I wouldn't mind a continuation of the old system.

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M2e settled into a 2 errata per year cycle.

January was an overhaul of models that could be clarity based, or incorrect power levels or anything really.

July was the "emergency" errata to resolve things that were too broken to wait another 6 months

There was also the new book release in August that sometimes made a big change to the power levels of certain models. (Oxfordian mages were viewed as poor for a while, then they got a new "free" upgrade and also Sandeep came out and interacted with the academic keyword and suddenly between the two, Oxfordian mages were everywhere).

 

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The idea of patching the models with upgrades may interact with crews that get bonuses when targeting models with upgrades... however putting the erratas in printable cards which don't interact with the game may be a good idea.

One of the problems of games so complex as this one with the stats of the models "hard wired" in cards is how hard is to make adjustment over time (and how hard is for the players to track the errata changes); creating new high quality cards would be a solution but players won't be willing to buy new cards periodically, print them is a cheaper solution for both sides but it make the final result worse... so there is no perfect solution.

Creating cards to have near of the main card with the changes is a good way to integrate it with the game while keeping the high quality original cards; but if too many models are errated, it may become cumbersome quickly.

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@Ogid Your right about not using upgrades for erratas as it would benefit crews who use them (jack would love it :)) but I think the best way of doing it is just to release the new errata cards for people to print themselves or buy from WGV. Having extra cards on the table that weren't upgrades but had changes on them I think would get confusing

I'm personally one of those people who needs the proper shiny real card so in M2E I usually just ordered from WGV every Jan. Its not cheap or ideal but as it was only once a year I didn't mind to much

What I'd love to see is a way for us to order cards through our LGS, so those of us in Europe/Australia etc coudl get them without paying the stupid postage/import costs

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I'm personally not very fussy about components and I rather low quality components if that means making the game easier to update; but not everyone agrees with that. In Malifaux is probably "worse" because the cards are really high quality. Which is very good, but it also make more expensive the replacement and the players more attached to them.

The App is a great step, but physical stuff is needed with the stats... I like the way Infinity solved this, they don't have physical cards but an App where you can see all the stats, profiles, weapons and make a list (kind of this one). But that App has a way to generate printable lists, so when you are going to play you just load up your list, see if there is any profile updated, print it and go to play. There aren't that many profiles changes, but when it does all it's updated automatically.

I'm not sure that would click here, and it would need some changes (ability described, not only named, way to track conditions...); but for me that's the ideal way to set up a way to be able to make as many changes as necessary in the long term.

I attach one generated Infinity list if someone is curious.

Infinity Army Example.pdf

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45 minutes ago, Ogid said:

The App is a great step, but physical stuff is needed with the stats... I like the way Infinity solved this, they don't have physical cards but an App where you can see all the stats, profiles, weapons and make a list (kind of this one). But that App has a way to generate printable lists, so when you are going to play you just load up your list, see if there is any profile updated, print it and go to play. There aren't that many profiles changes, but when it does all it's updated automatically.

A few random notes:

1.  The Malifaux app has full text searching of the cards.  Wyrd provided full text, but only provided the cards as the final images.  I think Wyrd's really attached to the card look.

2.  In addition to the official Infinity app, there's the very awesome unofficial MayaNet app.

Corvus Belli, bless their hearts, sort of exposes the problem with having an online army builder:

  • The occasional "stealth" update.
  • If you don't have good discipline about publishing change logs (bless their hearts, CB is terrible about this), it'll be a surprise when the profiles change.  There's a Combined Army model, affectionately known as Dr. Worm, which was flip-flopping from S2 to S3 and back for a few months.
  • For the longest time, the way Army shows some of the link team information hasn't corresponded with how the PDF profiles or rulebook shows the link team information.  And some of the multiple-form troopers are handled in a messy, messy way.

 

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I see you are familiarized with CB! Yep, 100% agree on that; there are some issues with stealth changes, logs, and some missmatches seems to indicates the background management of these data could be improved, in addition to other issues I won't enter in details (I never said there the grass were greener there :P). But I don't want to be unfair, It's still a great game that runs smoothly enough. However for me the advantages of that system outweights the dissadvantages and some of these are probably they saying "this works well enough, no need to improve/update it yet"

I do like Wyrd's cards, they are really eye-appealing, much more than a printed sheet, which has their own advantages to attract attention and bring more players; however it takes a tool on how easy is to make changes which I think it's important to balance this kind of games in long term. I guess it's impossible to have it all!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I mean with the app I fully expect them to continue the practice of updating cards each year for a handful of models. I would not expect 0ss upgrades this edition as they are much rarer. That said, the recent GG0 was an amazing example of thinking outside the box to solve a balance issue in the mission definition without having to errata a thing: The removal of the problem of Obey in Idols and Plant Explosives.

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