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So are Arcanists, Outcasts, and Ten Thunders the dominant factions?


Maniacal_cackle

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In every American or UK tournament I hear of, the top tables are dominated by these three factions.

Are they just the most powerful crews? Are those meta defined by special rules (single master?), specific players, or something else that makes them unusual? Am I just imagining this and Bayou are the one true gods of Malifaux?

With the big UK tournament results a while back there were calls to hold off on judgements until there was more information. But it seems these factions are dominating a number of tournaments (although it is also possible the same players all dominate the UK tournaments for instance).

What do you think? Certainly in my one tournament, Ten Thunders were a nightmare to play against, but that could have been lack of familiarity.

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Texas meta has trouble finding Arcanists or Outcasts at all. My little ecosystem within the meta has started theorycrafting how to play them locally because we're tired of Neverborn and Ten Thunders. I can only speak to that meta though. The consistent trend I've found seems to be that whichever brave souls representing Guild get their teeth stomped out and then they swear off Guild and play something they can win with. 

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The lack of Guild is concerning (from a game health standpoint rather than a fluff standpoint, cause F those guys).  While I did not personally end up playing Guild often, I saw them around enough last edition.  This go round, I have yet to even see a Lady Justice on the table in person....

In my local meta, I think Ressers have taken both 1st on the two tournaments we've had here since official launch.

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Russians supposedly love the Neverborn... So things are meta dependent.

At the same time... The game is young, things are popping up and need to before the counters are found. Just look at the history of the game. This month Shenlong is the easy-button, before him Zoraida and Dreamer, before them Lynch was pushing his brand of drugs on everyone. And so it goes... Before January is over you'll probably see the Bayou steamrolling everyone.

The best advice is not to bother about the flavour of the month, but rather focus on your own models and learning your own crews. Study what causes all the ruckus and consider your counters to it. You won't be able to errata or nerf anything anyway, and trust in Wyrd's got their eyes on the game. Instead concentrate on what you can do – your games will be a lot better, if you search for solutions rather than problems.

Around here the Guild is dominating everything - at least in attendance if not efficiency. 

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The top ranked UK player is still Resserectionists, and has won one of the GTs this year, 5th ranked is Bayou, and the top 5 are all representing a different faction. So whilst the "headlines" appear to be those 3, looking at the results its a lot less clear (I wonder how discussions would have changed if the Seamus player beat the Shenlong player to top the UK GT in the last round). (Also worth noting the second placed Resserectionist player is higher than the second placed Ten thunders player, so its at least a little more than just 1 amazing player getting results). The rankings are based on 12 months, and the fixed rules haven't been out for 12 months, so there might also be some changes there

Malifaux is a very complicated game to rank in my mind (I've not played in any M3 events yet, but did a fair number in first and second edition), and I know that some of the results previously seemed down to which round 1 faction faced another, so which faction was best at that stratergy. Suggesting that the results could have been different if they faced the same players but in different orders

I'm sure there is a "best" faction, but I doubt its best at all things, and the differences are probably much lower than the differences in player skill in most games. (Lots of people are drawn to play the "best" faction, so its then more likely to have good results just based on the number of players).

 

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That's not what I've seen, anecdotally. I haven't had much of an opportunity to play in tournaments since 3e, but the three I have played in have been won by Neverborn, Ressers, and Thunders. There are a couple of really powerful Bayou masters that I've played as well and, based on the games I've played, I think Guild is in a fine place. I'm not for a minute suggesting my experiences with 3e so far are the best gauge of power levels, but I don't think things are too bad. 

Arcanists have some really nice versatile models and upgrades, but their master don't scare me too much. I don't see them as dominant but rather as a pretty balance faction. Shenlong is very good (rather Fermented River Style is very good) and Yan Lo is good. Thunders overall seems mildly better than Arcanists. Outcasts is interesting. Leveticus and Tara are really good, but everything in Outcasts has weaknesses. 

Neverborn seems pretty powerful to me with Dreamer (still, IMHO, the most powerful master in the game right now) and Zoriada. Ressers is solid. Bayou has a couple of good masters. I do buy into the Guild-is-the-weakest-faction right now, but I don't think they're bad necessarily. 

Yeah, I think everything is OK right now. Something will likely be broken, but I don't see big issues today. 

  

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  • 1 month later...

As an Outcast player, I don't feel that we're very dominant.  Amalgam probably needs to be looked at a little, but it's not total BS.  

Ten Thunders could use a good pass on their Versatile models, I feel like they have way too many extremely good Versatile models.  Arcanists have the same issue, Spider Swarms are a good for what they cost, and Soulstone Miners are a bit BS (they really shouldn't be able to place scheme markers the turn they unbury, there's no counterplay).  I also a bit feel like maybe Shenlong could use a nerf.

Neverborn could use non-Dreamer masters looked at.  Guild could use... just something.  They've got so many decent models, and nothing that really screams "holy shit".  Every other faction gets "holy shit" models, and Guild it always just feels like "yep, this is pretty fair".  

A lot of individual models could use small tweaks, but I think faction balance right now is good for 5 of the 7 factions, with Neverborn really needing a boost to non-Dreamer masters to get there (although solo Dreamer might still do some amazing shit).  

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Soulstone Miner can't place a Scheme Marker the turn they unbury. Unbury is a Bonus Action and they always treat the Interact Action as a Bonus Action (Busy Drilling). So they can't use two Bonus Actions (Unbury and Interact) the same turn. Still they should be looked at (especially concerning the Magical Training Upgrade).

 

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All great points!

Even for Neverborn, I wonder if it may be a popularity thing. You see some players dominating with Nekima for example.

Personally I like the existence of generically strong versatile models. It makes it easier to get into the game for players with small collections, and you still don't take them in synergy based crews (Kirai and Dreamer are pretty happy going 100% keyword for example).

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i think the biggest issue right now is that there are keywords that are missing key models, whether because they aren't released yet, or the M2E version is particularly hard to track down.

Some factions have some very powerful masters that can be taken into any Strategy and Scheme pool (Shenlong, Von Schtook and Dreamer), and some factions have very good niche picks that cant be brought into everything.

If I was getting into a third faction, I fully believe that you could run through most tournaments with Levi+Tara as your only masters. Same could be said about some other factions.

I also think that we may start seeing more Guild, now that Dashel and Lucius are coming out soon. But time will tell.

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10 minutes ago, farmoar said:

i think the biggest issue right now is that there are keywords that are missing key models, whether because they aren't released yet, or the M2E version is particularly hard to track down.

Some factions have some very powerful masters that can be taken into any Strategy and Scheme pool (Shenlong, Von Schtook and Dreamer), and some factions have very good niche picks that cant be brought into everything.

If I was getting into a third faction, I fully believe that you could run through most tournaments with Levi+Tara as your only masters. Same could be said about some other factions.

I also think that we may start seeing more Guild, now that Dashel and Lucius are coming out soon. But time will tell.

Very true! I'd be a Transmortis player if I could have found any University boxes for sale.

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On 12/15/2019 at 7:59 PM, S4lt said:

outside of maybe 2 or 3 masters, Neverborn. 

Part of the issue Neverborn runs into is masters missing stuff(or players just missing stuff for the master). Lucius is still missing models, Titania and some of her models were just unavailable for a long time, Marcus is a new master for the faction so takes a lot of buying to flesh out. Euripides is missing stuff(as well as just not being out until pretty recently), Nekima is missing her totem. Pandora is missing stuff. That really only leaves Dreamer and Zoraida as masters that every neverborn player can reliably own with all the models. It also helps that those are probably the two strongest generalist masters(although Z took a hit with GG0).

 

From personal experience, I've played solo dreamer for 2 tournaments because he's the only neverborn(not counting DMH) master that I actually have all the keyword models in my possession for one reason or another.

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Factions aren't really domininant, its singular masters within a faction carrying them up. Info from tournaments is very unreliable at conveying the true state of the game.

Right now there's maybe 10 master's that are way above the rest due to how much stronger their mechanics are. It's not that they are unbeatable but if you aren't playing one of these masters it will be an uphill battle if you play against them. There are still other pushed masters but i don't think they are collectively doing as much as these masters.

Tara, Levi, Von Schtook, Kirai, Mah, Somer, Dreamer, Sandeep, Shenlong, Asami

A really big problem here is that most of the main action summoners are just broken mechanically, its like your crew starts with +27ss with how good most of their summons are and they still have faction abilities on top of that. Exorcism is the only useful anti summon tool and its not on that many models nor is it consistent tech against summoning. 

Another problem is how mobile you need to be to do a lot of the strats and schemes in this edition. The master listed above have great tools for scheming in addition to being able to out punch your opponent. 

Tara- Aionus generating 4 pass tokens is too much, it lets her crew always have initiative and guarantee out activating your opponent to score your points or deny their points. On top of that she's a summoner so she's generating an overwhelming amount of actions.

Levi- his crew is pushed but thats not really the problem, his irreducible damage boosting on top of abilities and models that give him free focus let him chunk through anything in the game risk free since he respawns on his totems. Anti-demise punishes his aggression but its a rare ability.

VSchtook- They are rediculously tanky (HTW + armor), draw lots of cards, have a summon ability that is easy to set up with Valedictorian, incredibly mobile(undergrads), and pulse focus. They have a pile of useful abilities that let them out punch all the non-summoners.

Kirai- she's a summoner, and if you kill any of her models they all start hitting you more consistently. 

Mah- Her crew is a bit pushed but what makes it over the top is the triple focus pulse happening on the first turn. 21 free focus is waaaay too much when it normally costs 1 action to get 1 focus. 

Somer- so he's a summoner, and then you get all these crazy bonuses on top of that. All their attacks are on stat 7 from bayou bash, and all their defenses are +1 from lenny's aura. then Bayou 2 card lets them cheat at no cost so their hand really only matters for summons. You kill one of their guys they get to shoot you for near free(discard a card). Good ol boys have swagger and richochet, letting them get free + damage flips on the ricochet trigger off their shotgun that's already laying down blasts. There's so many more useful abilities on their models, you wonder why guild even bothers existing as a faction compared to this.

Dreamer- At least everyone is on board with dreamer being broken. the focus is around stitched which are not costed correctly, but he's still a summoner with a pile of good abilities on all of his models. 

Sandeep- why does his faction get so many extra actions every time they concentrate, (draw a card, trigger demise, free movement, shielded +1, etc). It's bad enough that he can easily summon 2 minions in a turn. They easily out attrition non-summoner crews.

Shenlong- Fermented style + chi stacking. It's similar to levi where you can't really defend against it, you are hoping the shenlong player kills the wrong model that turn. The out of crew hires in 10T are strong, with 2 summons from Minako + Ototo and a card draw engine from yasunori + kitty dumont.  It doesn't help that wandering style can deny and score schemes so easily.

Asami- She has great aggressive summons and she also gets to hire the out of crew combos for a lot of consistency. 

 

 

 

 

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I have had a very different experience with summoners (though that may just be the individual matchups).

In general, summoner crews seem to be so action inefficient that I find them a bit behind say Forgotten for actually scoring points. That isn't universally true (Dreamer on corner deployment is a nightmare...), but there is a definite weakness there.

Especially if you remember to enforce the "no interacting the turn of summoning" rule, it makes a big difference.

On plant explosives, for example, the starting markers still have to be set on starting models. On turf war, extra summons mean extra chances for markers flipping. Corrupted idols... Is a summoning-favoured strategy for sure. Reckoning can go either way.

So I'd say it really depends (although I've not played top-tier competitive play).

But I rarely feel more powerful fielding a Dreamer crew over a Molly crew. Dreamer can wipe the enemy table, but Molly can secure and deny points with horrendous efficiency.

EDIT: I've only played against Asami once (Molly on corrupted idols) and got thrashed, but even then looking back I applied very little pressure to the enemy. If you don't pressure summoners, they'll carry away the game.

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9 hours ago, zavros said:

Dreamer- At least everyone is on board with dreamer being broken. the focus is around stitched which are not costed correctly, but he's still a summoner with a pile of good abilities on all of his models. 

Stitched not being costed correctly isn't the problem.  You could make them 8 stones (which is TOO high anyway) and Dreamer would still summon them just as much (a 12 or better is not a hard card to pull, and Widow gets them on 11).  The issue is the Gamble Your Life mixed together with Fiendish Gamble.  GYL has been on stitched since the very beginning (was worse then since models had lower wound counts and i think it was 3/4/6 iirc), it's just the almost certainty of it hitting that makes it an issue (Fiendish Gamble is basically Old Ways for stitched).  Problem being is that Fiendish Gamble is the only thing keeping Lucid Dreams from being a bad bonus action, since it gives you a way to bring cards back into play when you high card Lucid Dreams.  

I feel an appropriate nerf would be to make it so you can't use Fiendish Gamble with GYL (so it's still risky), but could use it on other actions, because then it's just basically Old Ways that Euri's crew has.  Unfortunately I worry the loudest people will force Wyrd to nerf Stitched into oblivion (which I mean... I like alps as summons too so it really won't affect dreamer too much).  Really, a major nerf to stitched would be more a nerf to Zoraida because that would mean that the Widow Weaver and Vasilisa summons wouldn't be particularly good.

4 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

But I rarely feel more powerful fielding a Dreamer crew over a Molly crew. Dreamer can wipe the enemy table, but Molly can secure and deny points with horrendous efficiency.

EDIT: I've only played against Asami once (Molly on corrupted idols) and got thrashed, but even then looking back I applied very little pressure to the enemy. If you don't pressure summoners, they'll carry away the game.

Yea but Molly is kinda broken too with how easily she can score/deny schemes with the current GG pool.  I think a lot of this has to go back to how skewed the scheme pool is this edition.  There's only 2 and a half murder schemes vs 9 others, meaning fast, mobile scheming is always going to win vs anything else until that is (hopefully) changed.

 

I just hope if they nerf Dreamer they bring up the rest of NVB.  Pandora and Titania desperately need some help (I still think Nekima herself needs some too but considering the fiasco in LVO I'll hold my opinion on that one), as does Euri (his crew doesn't have the mobility to play in a lot of scheme pools and marker removal is very accessible around most factions; same issues Rasputina suffers from).

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13 minutes ago, Nagi21 said:

Stitched not being costed correctly isn't the problem.  You could make them 8 stones (which is TOO high anyway) and Dreamer would still summon them just as much (a 12 or better is not a hard card to pull, and Widow gets them on 11).  The issue is the Gamble Your Life mixed together with Fiendish Gamble.  GYL has been on stitched since the very beginning (was worse then since models had lower wound counts and i think it was 3/4/6 iirc), it's just the almost certainty of it hitting that makes it an issue (Fiendish Gamble is basically Old Ways for stitched).  Problem being is that Fiendish Gamble is the only thing keeping Lucid Dreams from being a bad bonus action, since it gives you a way to bring cards back into play when you high card Lucid Dreams.  

I feel an appropriate nerf would be to make it so you can't use Fiendish Gamble with GYL (so it's still risky), but could use it on other actions, because then it's just basically Old Ways that Euri's crew has.  Unfortunately I worry the loudest people will force Wyrd to nerf Stitched into oblivion (which I mean... I like alps as summons too so it really won't affect dreamer too much).  Really, a major nerf to stitched would be more a nerf to Zoraida because that would mean that the Widow Weaver and Vasilisa summons wouldn't be particularly good.

Yea but Molly is kinda broken too with how easily she can score/deny schemes with the current GG pool.  I think a lot of this has to go back to how skewed the scheme pool is this edition.  There's only 2 and a half murder schemes vs 9 others, meaning fast, mobile scheming is always going to win vs anything else until that is (hopefully) changed.

 

I just hope if they nerf Dreamer they bring up the rest of NVB.  Pandora and Titania desperately need some help (I still think Nekima herself needs some too but considering the fiasco in LVO I'll hold my opinion on that one), as does Euri (his crew doesn't have the mobility to play in a lot of scheme pools and marker removal is very accessible around most factions; same issues Rasputina suffers from).

Agree stitched could easily be overnerfed into oblivion. Gotta be careful there.

Molly being stupid efficient is part of my point. IMO the scary crews include Parker, Zipp, Molly, Seamus, etc. Which is meant to rebut the "summoners are OP."

In my experience summoners fold to pressure (like Archie turn one leaping a bomb into place followed by two crooligans doing the same thing).

When I first played against summoners, I got stomped.  But I adapted.

Caveat: I've not played against top tier tournament players. Maybe it dominates at that level (wish we had more data).

EDIT: overall, I agree with another point you made: hyper efficient movement is top tier in this game. If you're not being crazy good with movement, you're probably not a top tier crew from my limited experience.

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13 hours ago, zavros said:

Dreamer- At least everyone is on board with dreamer being broken. the focus is around stitched which are not costed correctly, but he's still a summoner with a pile of good abilities on all of his models. 

Well, Dreamer is a powerful master but far from broken and stitcheds are very good but way overrated.

3 hours ago, Nagi21 said:

I feel an appropriate nerf would be to make it so you can't use Fiendish Gamble with GYL (so it's still risky), but could use it on other actions, because then it's just basically Old Ways that Euri's crew has.  Unfortunately I worry the loudest people will force Wyrd to nerf Stitched into oblivion (which I mean... I like alps as summons too so it really won't affect dreamer too much).  Really, a major nerf to stitched would be more a nerf to Zoraida because that would mean that the Widow Weaver and Vasilisa summons wouldn't be particularly good.

That would kill the model... swingly models are nice to play for fun but they are not competitive because sometimes you need to expend resources to make sure something happens. And that would leave Dreamer with awful choices to summon when damage is needed.

A posible nerf (if he needed one) would be reducing his Mv to 4; his role would remain the same (area denial and bad lucid dream buffer) but he would become easier to outmaneouver for others and worse in WW/Vasi lists.

However this isn't the place to rehash this conversation anyway. If anyone feels like keep beating this horse, this is the perfect thread.

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17 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I have had a very different experience with summoners (though that may just be the individual matchups).

In general, summoner crews seem to be so action inefficient that I find them a bit behind say Forgotten for actually scoring points. That isn't universally true (Dreamer on corner deployment is a nightmare...), but there is a definite weakness there.

Especially if you remember to enforce the "no interacting the turn of summoning" rule, it makes a big difference.

On plant explosives, for example, the starting markers still have to be set on starting models. On turf war, extra summons mean extra chances for markers flipping. Corrupted idols... Is a summoning-favoured strategy for sure. Reckoning can go either way.

So I'd say it really depends (although I've not played top-tier competitive play).

But I rarely feel more powerful fielding a Dreamer crew over a Molly crew. Dreamer can wipe the enemy table, but Molly can secure and deny points with horrendous efficiency.

EDIT: I've only played against Asami once (Molly on corrupted idols) and got thrashed, but even then looking back I applied very little pressure to the enemy. If you don't pressure summoners, they'll carry away the game.

How are summoners action inefficient when a summoned model still gets at least an action even with slow (and not all summons get slow). Every turn after where a summoned model is alive they are generating 2 or more actions. Lets say you summon a model the first turn of the game and it lives at least 1 more turn, that's +3 actions not including bonuses assuming it came in slow; now account that you didn't have to move that model from your deployment, it gets to immediately start affecting the board. If you summon the first 3 turns of the game, your getting at least +9 actions over your opponent who just gets pass tokens that don't help affect the board. If your opponent kills it right away, you are still up on actions as it likely took at least 2 attacks from their high impact model to kill a 7+SS summon vs the 1 action you spent to summon it. 

Summoned models don't need to do objectives, thats what the other 50SS in your crew is for. Your effectively bringing 27+ SS that sits there and fights your opponent, most crews can't interact when engaged so your tying up multiple models from doing anything relevant unless they fight you. And there are still summons that are great scheme runners if summoned early (minako's katashiro summons are incredible at scheming). 

I know they can't interact the same turn summoned, but with 5 entire turns you have plenty of time for a summoned model to kill something and do a scheme the next turn.  For something like turf war, you summon stuff in their quadrants. Reckoning, its difficult to kill enough 7+SS minions to score on later turns so summoning is barely a downside. In explosives, your summons can kill their models with bombs and now you have twice as many to put down.

I have played at high level tournaments, that's why I'm answering your thread question.  Recently I placed 3rd at the blues brawl (15 players) and 4th at the NC December Decimation GT (40ish players), only losing on the 5th round at top table, with his tara vs my shenlong. The main reason you don't see summoners dominating tournaments is due to time, a lot of players have difficulty making it to turn 5 within 2 hours when playing a summoner as there's so many actions to get through each turn. A summoner's strength is overwhelming you with actions over multiple turns, but if the game cuts short due to time they don't get to their full potential. If my game the last round of the GT actually ended when time was called we would have tied, but the TO decided we should finish the 5 turns as it was top table. Neither player was slow playing, it simply took a lot time due to the amount of actions happening as malifaux is a complicated game. This is why I don't consider tournament results accurate as it doesn't account for time among other things. 

 

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4 hours ago, zavros said:

How are summoners action inefficient when a summoned model still gets at least an action even with slow (and not all summons get slow). Every turn after where a summoned model is alive they are generating 2 or more actions. Lets say you summon a model the first turn of the game and it lives at least 1 more turn, that's +3 actions not including bonuses assuming it came in slow; now account that you didn't have to move that model from your deployment, it gets to immediately start affecting the board. If you summon the first 3 turns of the game, your getting at least +9 actions over your opponent who just gets pass tokens that don't help affect the board. If your opponent kills it right away, you are still up on actions as it likely took at least 2 attacks from their high impact model to kill a 7+SS summon vs the 1 action you spent to summon it. 

... In explosives, your summons can kill their models with bombs and now you have twice as many to put down.

I have no doubt that you have a wider/more diverse range of experience than I do (and more competitive), but this part misses my main point.

Summoning crews on average are action inefficient in that they take more actions to complete the same task.

As an example, I was Molly vs Kirai in my last tournament. Turn one I smashed out 2-3 bombs. From turn two onwards, I was pressuring his bomb drops by threatening to pick them up/engage his carriers. Meanwhile my team swapped to attacking Kirai (with assassinate scheme in the pool).

I also smashed one of his key pieces on end of turn 1/start of turn 2 (Molly has an activation control advantage in this matchup), severely crippling him and ruining his early bomb plan.

He was having to expend lots of resources just to tread water/not lose Kirai and his bombs. I was pressuring him across every angle - having to deal with my bombs, getting his bombs down, protecting Kirai, etc. In the end I didn't even have assassinate, but I made him burn resources thinking I did.

If the game went 10 turns, he would have won for sure. But there was no chance for him in the five turn game with how the first two turns went.

A summoning crew generally can't pull off those shenanigans. They accomplish less per action and make up for it by having more actions. Not to mention they are spending cards on summoning while I am spending cards killing key enemy pieces.

Note this breaks down a bit with OOK or versatile shenanigans (Asami can get crazy efficient with versatile models from what I saw in my one game). So I wouldn't be surprised if some from you list do need a rework.

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