Using terrain to even up the odds, and generally balancing around terrain?

[Maniacal_cackle]

I'm wondering if anyone uses terrain to even up the odds in casual games? Also curious about stories of messing up games by getting the board balance wrong!

Sometimes you have a player who just tends to win more. Sometimes you have mismatched crews.

I'm wondering how often people use terrain in casual games to even up discrepancies like this. Maybe even something like if you play an opponent and lose, the next time you play them you get to decide the battlefield (jungle with loads of forests, city with loads of buildings, etc).

Also wonder how it'll work out for some of the 'weak' masters. Reva is renown for being weak, but personally I think she has tons of potential on a forest heavy map. The ability to walk through them unimpeded as well as 'see' through them with corpse markers is pretty wicked.

If I'm playing Molly, we have started to check and discuss all the sight corridors before the game. Molly with an open board becomes heavily favoured, and so it is a good thing to watch out for.

It is something I didn't originally put much thought into in the first few games, but now try to take into account game balance for boards. I'm curious as to what other people's process for terrain and game balance is?

[LaevusLevusXIII]

I can't speak for general competitive Malifaux games as we live in quite an isolated Meta (Canadian Rocky Mountains), but we definitely like to load the table up on all sorts of ridiculous terrain. One of our stronger players often runs Marcus who just ignores most of the severe terrain or jumps around it, but that doesn't really stop us running multiple levels, rivers, entire hazardous sections for push damage, tight streets, and all other plethora of weird setups.

 

Usually I find we try to set up an interesting table, or a themed table if we can, and then worry about whether the game will end up one sided as a result. It's very rare one side is completely discounted, but some features will definitely dictate the way a crew is forced to play into or around them. For us that's not really a negative as it makes each game and crew selection different from the last. I think the terrain interaction in Malifaux is one of its strong suits.

 

We have had one game where the layout of the rivers definitely screwed with the ability of large based models to move, to the point of almost making them useless. It was still fun, but lesson learnt, use a few more bridges and don't play with canals between buildings 😝.

[frumpypigskin]

UK masters had a hefty lean toward the attacker going on to win. If you consider that this may not just be an anomaly, I think the next most likely reason is picking the deployment that best plays to their advantage... So in closely matched, highly skilled opponents, terrain choice/advantage may play a significant role. Who's to say how big a benefit to lower average skill matches

[Maniacal_cackle]

8 hours ago, frumpypigskin said:

UK masters had a hefty lean toward the attacker going on to win. If you consider that this may not just be an anomaly, I think the next most likely reason is picking the deployment that best plays to their advantage... So in closely matched, highly skilled opponents, terrain choice/advantage may play a significant role. Who's to say how big a benefit to lower average skill matches

That's really useful info! Picking terrain sides has felt like a major factor in many of my games.

[Angelshard]

Might sound a bit boring, but we always try to make a balanced board that gives as few advantages as possible to any kind of crew, while still including terrain that gives models that gain advantages from certain types of terrain value. It isn't easy.