Tactica Pyrotechnica - Wong

[Adran]

7 minutes ago, ShinChan said:

In those cases, the stuffled piglet would be killed by the model with Black Blood or the terrain, never by the action "Full Load". 

Yes, I agree that its not killed by the full load action. They would kill it before it got to take the bacon bomb action of the trigger though. 

Like I said, its a confusing reminder, and that may not have been its intent. It does make people thing things happen that don't, but if you follow the rules, then the text makes no actual change to the model.

 

[Jubby]

On 6/8/2020 at 1:39 PM, Adran said:

It does make people thing things happen that don't, but if you follow the rules, then the text makes no actual change to the model.

 

Yes it does, it brings confusion and questions

[OracleToronto]

I know you mentioned that damage reduction like armour, shielded and stones are difficult for Wong but digging through the cards it would seem you have the ability to spam irreducible damage through lightning bugs, swine-cursed, and the Pigapult. With the ability to use Glowy tokens for the suits it would seem like Wong is actually a pick against armour/shielded models and lists. 

[rvdbarnes]

Can anyone offer any help with getting the wizz bang turn one just right?

[Scoffer]

20 minutes ago, rvdbarnes said:

Can anyone offer any help with getting the wizz bang turn one just right?

I do it like this:

1. Olivia. Drop a scheme within 6" from Wong, Tossed Sparklers at Swine Cursed/Alphonse to give glowy, assist to remove burning.

2. Wong. Launch the scheme Into Space (with a Tome trigger), double Fzzzzap at all wyzz-bangs, bonus action fir extra glowy and cards (if necessary)

3. Bokor. Triple heal with a tome/crow trigger. All models should be at full health at the end of Bokor's activation.

4-N. Push Wong into position with Swine Cursed/Alphonse, move beaters closer to the fight, position Sammy within 6 from the rest of the crew, throw a grenade with Burt to make backliners fast.

[rober695]

So what's the general consensus? Did GG1 hurt or help wong out? Or is it a wash, he is where he was. I can't for the life of me get this crew rolling. Or know where it's home is. They just seem to die off so quick bokors or not. 

What kind of strats and schemes you guys generally looking to with Wong? And which keyword should I focus on most to kind of pick up his weak spots? Im looking to field two keywords at tourneys/games. Till I get better at the game. Models wise and fluff wise my heart is set on wong. But game wise...im just not sure. Shockwave as a mechanic just seems kind of bad. The opponent has so much control over the outcome. 

[ShinChan]

1 hour ago, rober695 said:

So what's the general consensus? Did GG1 hurt or help wong out? Or is it a wash, he is where he was. I can't for the life of me get this crew rolling. Or know where it's home is. They just seem to die off so quick bokors or not. 

What kind of strats and schemes you guys generally looking to with Wong? And which keyword should I focus on most to kind of pick up his weak spots? Im looking to field two keywords at tourneys/games. Till I get better at the game. Models wise and fluff wise my heart is set on wong. But game wise...im just not sure. Shockwave as a mechanic just seems kind of bad. The opponent has so much control over the outcome. 

Wizz-Bang is definitely worse in GG1.

The following schemes were some of the ones that benefit the most the crew:

Power Ritual, Detonate Charges, Harness the Leyline, Search the Ruins, Dig Their Graves and Deliver a Message. 

The easy access to fast (dropping 2 scheme markers in a single activation) and the scheme marker manipulation (Sammy, Lightning Bugs, Bokors with Obey...) was good enough to make them quite competent in GG0, although far from the top masters. 

In GG1 there are more positional schemes, and there arent many schemes based on scheme markers, specially those that were you need a buch of markers together.

Wizz-Bang really suffers against crews that can directly go over his frontline and attack the support models (which ara a lot) and most of the crew is very glass cannon.

Wong really needs one of those abilities that say "When this model is the crew's leader, all friendly Wizz-Bang models with 3 or more glowy tokens heal 1 at the beginning of their activation and then gain 1 Glowy token". 

Fzzzzap! Shouldn't remove the glowy tokens and instead do 1 extra damage for each 2 Glowy tokens. 

In addition, Burt really needs a boost, he's almost unplayable at 8ss with Df5, he definitely needs Hard to Kill and a decent trigger in the gun. Olivia needs Manipulative and the Pigapult needs to make the launched model take the shockwave.

 

[Scoffer]

20 minutes ago, ShinChan said:

Burt really needs a boost, he's almost unplayable at 8ss with Df5, he definitely needs Hard to Kill and a decent trigger in the gun

I think Burt is fine as is. He has a great df trigger, great melee and a good gun. Any improvements will make him too good.

[ShinChan]

1 hour ago, Scoffer said:

I think Burt is fine as is. He has a great df trigger, great melee and a good gun. Any improvements will make him too good.

Different experiences I guess. IMHO he's too squishy and the melee is quite lackluster with a damage track of a 5-6ss minion. Yes, he has access to Critical Strike, but you're going to need the cards of the glowy, and loading him with glowy when he is quite easy to kills is not a good idea. You want scheming? 2 Flying Piglets will do it better for the same price, or save 1ss and bring Merris. You want damage? A Taxidermist is going to do the same or more.

He brings 0 utility after throwing the grenade to his friends in turn 1. Again, in my opinion, in the top 2-3 worst enforcers of the game.

[Scoffer]

8 hours ago, ShinChan said:

Different experiences I guess. IMHO he's too squishy and the melee is quite lackluster with a damage track of a 5-6ss minion. Yes, he has access to Critical Strike, but you're going to need the cards of the glowy, and loading him with glowy when he is quite easy to kills is not a good idea. You want scheming? 2 Flying Piglets will do it better for the same price, or save 1ss and bring Merris. You want damage? A Taxidermist is going to do the same or more.

He brings 0 utility after throwing the grenade to his friends in turn 1. Again, in my opinion, in the top 2-3 worst enforcers of the game.

From my experience Burt should be played as the second line fighter. He stays behind Swine Cursed and Alphonse and feels pretty safe, because his df trigger makes him a low-priority target.

[rober695]

What about bringing Merris in to cheese out as many shockwaves as possible in the crew. I think it seems bad but you never know. Just wondering if shockwave gets better if you max the volume of them. 

[rober695]

On 10/12/2020 at 6:42 PM, ShinChan said:

Different experiences I guess. IMHO he's too squishy and the melee is quite lackluster with a damage track of a 5-6ss minion. Yes, he has access to Critical Strike, but you're going to need the cards of the glowy, and loading him with glowy when he is quite easy to kills is not a good idea. You want scheming? 2 Flying Piglets will do it better for the same price, or save 1ss and bring Merris. You want damage? A Taxidermist is going to do the same or more.

He brings 0 utility after throwing the grenade to his friends in turn 1. Again, in my opinion, in the top 2-3 worst enforcers of the game.

Honestly I'm ok with that. I haven't got almost any 3e in. But there was a period there in 2e he was in every freaking crew. Regardless of faction. He can live through M3e as a mid of the road enforcer and I would be ok with that. 

[ShinChan]

45 minutes ago, rober695 said:

What about bringing Merris in to cheese out as many shockwaves as possible in the crew. I think it seems bad but you never know. Just wondering if shockwave gets better if you max the volume of them. 

Merris as a standalone scheme runner is decent, maybe even good enough to pay the extra SS if you think that a Flying Piglet can't do the same. But for more shockwaves? Your opponent is already going to be playing to avoid shockwaves, so bringing more (that don't interact in any way with glowy) is mostly pointless.

43 minutes ago, rober695 said:

Honestly I'm ok with that. I haven't got almost any 3e in. But there was a period there in 2e he was in every freaking crew. Regardless of faction. He can live through M3e as a mid of the road enforcer and I would be ok with that. 

IMHO he's not in mid of the table, most likely in the bottom, you can't compare M2E and M3E. I dislike the Taxidermist, and they're better than him for the same cost, with the advantage of being minions.

[rober695]

4 hours ago, ShinChan said:

Merris as a standalone scheme runner is decent, maybe even good enough to pay the extra SS if you think that a Flying Piglet can't do the same. But for more shockwaves? Your opponent is already going to be playing to avoid shockwaves, so bringing more (that don't interact in any way with glowy) is mostly pointless.

IMHO he's not in mid of the table, most likely in the bottom, you can't compare M2E and M3E. I dislike the Taxidermist, and they're better than him for the same cost, with the advantage of being minions.

I think you misunderstood my sentiments. I wasn't comparing the two games in the a gameplay sense. I mean more...there are lots of cool looking models in the malifaux range.

Many that weren't necessarily good enough to take in the last edition (ex. Fuhatsu). That now are really good and seeing the table. And others that were all stars (Burt) that maybe aren't so much anymore, and won't be seen as much. Thats what I'm down with. Right or wrong I am excited to see more varied or at least different stuff out there. 

[cassa]

So I've jumped into this crew since the 2e stuff (Wong box, Lenny for Alphonse, cursed swine + wrastlers) was cheaper than the new Wrastler box.

Compared to Parker it sure seems like a lot more plates to have to keep spinning.

[zeno]

As a kind of new player (5 games into M3E, but did play a bunch of M2E though) I've tried Wong twice. And even with guides I think its a bit of a mess to be honest.
The first turn (and maybe even second) I'm playing my own game while my opponent just get to sit there and watch while I draw cards, place and remove tokens, and even take and remove damage from my own models.
Sure I'm new to it so I keep re-reading rules and such so it takes me a lot longer than anyone more experienced. But still if I knew the crew it'll still take quite some time to bookkeep everything.
IMHO its quite a mess as things work now.

I'd vote for a tweak or re-design. But I don't think we'll see such a thing.

But then again, I am a newbie

[SEV]

18 minutes ago, zeno said:

Sure I'm new to it so I keep re-reading rules and such so it takes me a lot longer than anyone more experienced. But still if I knew the crew it'll still take quite some time to bookkeep everything.
IMHO its quite a mess as things work now.

Most condition / token combo master required bookkeeping. There's alot of tool to help with that IRL. The rest of the turn is mostly scripted sequence. With practice you'll get quite fast at executing them. I play regularly against @ShinChan and as an experienced Wong player, I thin he plays his turn faster than I do with my regular crew!

Where it become tricky is when you opponent doesn't let you do your thing for the first 2 turns (as he should, obviously). Than you have to adapt and change your sequence.

 

[zeno]

6 minutes ago, SEV said:

Most condition / token combo master required bookkeeping. There's alot of tool to help with that IRL. The rest of the turn is mostly scripted sequence. With practice you'll get quite fast at executing them. I play regularly against @ShinChan and as an experienced Wong player, I thin he plays his turn faster than I do with my regular crew!

Where it become tricky is when you opponent doesn't let you do your thing for the first 2 turns (as he should, obviously). Than you have to adapt and change your sequence.

 

Glad to hear it!
Then its just me being new to the game and having a hard time staying with one and the same master for more than a couple of games
So much to try still!

 

[Cats Laughing]

8 minutes ago, zeno said:

Glad to hear it!
Then its just me being new to the game and having a hard time staying with one and the same master for more than a couple of games
So much to try still!

Some of the tools that help with bookkeeping:

In Vassal many conditions can be marked directly on models.  Glowy isn't a hotkeyed condition (as it's not a condition), but there are tokens in Vassal for Glowy that have the number function (so you can use one token per model and just update the number up/down as needed).  It's good to grab such tokens during set up so you have them available during the game.

In the Malifaux App when you "play" a game you're able to track all sorts of conditions & tokens in game, including glowy.

If playing in person and not using the app, then you'll want to have various tokens/markers to use.  Dry-erase ones are very good for marking +1 type conditions/tokens.

 

When new to Malifaux, I do suggest sticking to the same master (and also a core of models) for several games, while you learn mechanics and also the crew.  But I totally understand the desire to butterfly jump between masters and crews frequently.

[ShinChan]

44 minutes ago, zeno said:

As a kind of new player (5 games into M3E, but did play a bunch of M2E though) I've tried Wong twice. And even with guides I think its a bit of a mess to be honest.
The first turn (and maybe even second) I'm playing my own game while my opponent just get to sit there and watch while I draw cards, place and remove tokens, and even take and remove damage from my own models.
Sure I'm new to it so I keep re-reading rules and such so it takes me a lot longer than anyone more experienced. But still if I knew the crew it'll still take quite some time to bookkeep everything.
IMHO its quite a mess as things work now.

I'd vote for a tweak or re-design. But I don't think we'll see such a thing.

But then again, I am a newbie

Hey there! Glad to see more Wong love around, he's the best master in the game! (by "the rule of cool", the most important one in any game).

I feel everything you say, Wizz-Bang really requires a lot of setup to get them to work at their 100% (which usually is inferior to other keywords' 90%). The setup in turn 1 is critical, since you want to overload your models with glowy to make them work in later turns, and you also need to heal them back.

My first piece of advice here is that you always put the upgrade "2 Gremlins in a Ghillie Suit" on Wong. This will really help you to not spend 30 minutes trying to do your deployment in the right way, since Wong will be able to see over a bunch of their friends in order to drop those shockwaves and get the Glowy party started.

Some players bring a Pig model with Stampede in order to slam your other models and generate more glowy. It's a nice technique, but I prefer to play in keyword (with the occasional add of Sparks + Porkchop in order to create decent explosions).

You need to focus on getting enough glowy in 1-2 models and "just enough" glowy in the rest. Ideally you'll overload Alphonse + another bruiser (pick your poison here: Swine-Cursed/Taxidermist/Sammy), while giving some glowy to your other models like Bokors.

In general, Wizz-Bang is a poorly executed design of a keyword (specially due to late minute changes in the beta in the general rules that affected them), but really fun to play in general. They were a better in Gaining Grounds 0 (or the Strats and Schemes that come in the rulebook), so if you're learning, I would advice you to play with your opponents those missions, which IMHO were (with some exceptions) more fun than the current GG1.

Try not to desperate, you can win with Wong, you can play turns quite fast with some practice and more importantly, you'll definitely have fun! I have more than 30 games with him and around 50% winrate (mostly in casual games) 

[Cats Laughing]

Curious, what was the last minute general rules change.  I feel like there's something missing in a few keywords that might have suffered from such last minute changes, but especially in Wong.

[Thatguy]

52 minutes ago, Cats Laughing said:

Curious, what was the last minute general rules change.  I feel like there's something missing in a few keywords that might have suffered from such last minute changes, but especially in Wong.

There were a few. A lot of stuff was in flux for Gremlins until the end of the beta. I know Kin got Bigger They Are and Flinch relatively late. Big Hat's Bayou Bash was offensive and defensive until towards the end when the defensive part was ditched and turned into Lenny's Gremlin General.

I'm not sure about what changed for Wong. Iirc some conditions changed part late in the beta too.

[GrumpyGrandpa]

16 hours ago, Thatguy said:

There were a few. A lot of stuff was in flux for Gremlins until the end of the beta. I know Kin got Bigger They Are and Flinch relatively late. Big Hat's Bayou Bash was offensive and defensive until towards the end when the defensive part was ditched and turned into Lenny's Gremlin General.

I'm not sure about what changed for Wong. Iirc some conditions changed part late in the beta too.

I remember when Som'er had +2 Arcane Reservoir, and Bayou Bash didn't have a limit on how high it stacked 🤣

[wizuriel]

The only change I remember was injuries used to be -1 to your flips making the injuried Wong can throw out actually help his crew.

He should have been changed to hand out staggered when injury stopped effecting MV duels imo.

 

I think people complained about how Wong worked the entire beta, especially how he himself interacts with glowy

[ShinChan]

17 hours ago, wizuriel said:

The only change I remember was injuries used to be -1 to your flips making the injuried Wong can throw out actually help his crew.

He should have been changed to hand out staggered when injury stopped effecting MV duels imo.

 

I think people complained about how Wong worked the entire beta, especially how he himself interacts with glowy

I don't recall any complains during the beta, but I was mainly focused on Outcasts, but you're right, Injured in Wong really helped to make those simple duels more effective.

Also,the interactions with glowy feel a bit lackluster. Specially the lack of interaction with glowy in the enemies and how little rewarding it is.