Archie Errata

[farmoar]

22 minutes ago, Trample said:

He probably won't be bad for 9, but he'll function a bit differently. 

quoted for emphasis.

Everyone agrees that the nerf was needed, but this was more of a character assassination than a nerf, in that he plays entirely different now. For comparison, both Rusty Alyce and Ashes&Dust still play the same roles they did before, just with lower stats. The same can't be said for Archie.

[Maniacal_cackle]

I'm playing in our last GG0 tournament today, so will report back how Archie feels.

An additional thing that needs testing is how good Philip is in the new meta. I suspect the baby pram is now the crooligan transport instead of Archie's pockets.

So it may be a fundamental change, but may be okay if P&N fill the gap.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Took Archie every game of a tournament today.

I was drawing super hot (first game, 2/3 leaps went off from the top of the deck), and had masks available at pretty much all times.

I think we have definitely overblown the nerf a bit. It is not tooooo terrible.

That said, from a game design perspective, I still don't like it. Now Archie is just higher variance. Two of the three games, the nerf literally did not influence him at all. Of course, there'll be some games where he can't leap two turns in a row. It is a high variance solution and so I dislike it, but I don't think we can say they "destroyed" Archie. I definitely overestimated the impact.

That said, it also causes some annoying clunkiness for the crew and is just awkward to play, feels a bit antisynergistic, but that's just personal taste of how I think the crew 'should' feel.

[Shakyor]

3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Took Archie every game of a tournament today.

I was drawing super hot (first game, 2/3 leaps went off from the top of the deck), and had masks available at pretty much all times.

I think we have definitely overblown the nerf a bit. It is not tooooo terrible.

That said, from a game design perspective, I still don't like it. Now Archie is just higher variance. Two of the three games, the nerf literally did not influence him at all. Of course, there'll be some games where he can't leap two turns in a row. It is a high variance solution and so I dislike it, but I don't think we can say they "destroyed" Archie. I definitely overestimated the impact.

That said, it also causes some annoying clunkiness for the crew and is just awkward to play, feels a bit antisynergistic, but that's just personal taste of how I think the crew 'should' feel.

Thanks for taking the time and sharing!

 

Did the missing rutheless ever come up? Its honsetly what has me worried a little more...

[Maniacal_cackle]

8 hours ago, Shakyor said:

Thanks for taking the time and sharing!

 

Did the missing rutheless ever come up? Its honsetly what has me worried a little more...

Nope. There were a few manipulative models, but I prefer to activate Archie at the end of the turn anyway.

Terrifying would be very annoying, but that is what the ruthless upgrade is for (or the plethora of other ruthless options).

[Maniacal_cackle]

Although now that I think about it...

Archie's timing of his leap is much more awkward, so manipulative is not going to be trivial to ignore.

He died twice in my games due to early engaging so I could get cards out of my hand for Molly redraws. I used to activate him after Molly most of the time for the early turns. Much less viable now (when you get the mask, you get the mask).

[Paddywhack]

I'm not sure basing it off of 3 games is really a great indicator. What if the next 3 games you never flip the mask, would you think he was useless? 

It's still a harsh nerf. We'll have to see how he plays or over time, but I would have preferred a little something different. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

4 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

I'm not sure basing it off of 3 games is really a great indicator. What if the next 3 games you never flip the mask, would you think he was useless? 

It's still a harsh nerf. We'll have to see how he plays or over time, but I would have preferred a little something different. 

To be clear, I still think the nerf is annoying and bad game design (while the stitched nerf surprised me with its approach, I thought it was elegant game design).

Running the numbers and play testing it a bit, I can see that on average he is going to leap (with clunkyness).

Power level wise, on average, he is actually probably still pretty high in Forgotten.

But it is still a high variance solution (sometimes he just can't leap), and I don't like it at all. Sometimes he will be exactly the same, and on occasion he will suddenly be garbage. Variance of those extremes annoys me.

[Paddywhack]

Just now, Maniacal_cackle said:

(while the stitched nerf surprised me with its approach, I thought it was elegant game design).

I just played sharing 3 stitched and they still such to face. Couldn't beat him once on Gamble with their ability to pull cards from their lucid dream pile. Better than before, but they still suck to face.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Agree. I find high variance models annoying to play. Still would have preferred just removing leap and adding some form of healing ability.

[farmoar]

17 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Agree. I find high variance models annoying to play. Still would have preferred just removing leap and adding some form of healing ability.

maybe the Forgotten keyword ability is actually high variance? Archie and Forgotten Marshal are best buds now

[LeperColony]

Maybe The Whisper is more appealing on Archie now?  Not that it was a bad pick before necessarily, but now you're wanting to secure those leaps.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Or just hire a necropunk. A large portion of his cost is tied up in his hitting potential, and there is no reason to pay for that if it’s unreliable, and since he can’t focus it’s inherently unreliable. If you need him for mobility you might as well hire 2 necropunks for about the same cost as 1 of him and an upgrade.

[Thatguy]

Archie is still great. He's arguably still the best beater Resers have.

Defensively he's a beater with 11 wounds, Terrifying 12, and hard to wound. Having effectively regen 1 as well while he's stuck in definitely doesn't hurt. 

He requires a bit more card support, but it's not like Molly is hurting for card draw. 

[Fetid Strumpet]

Best beater Ressers have? Not by a long shot. Even if we limit it to non-Masters the Rider has Archie beat by a large amount. Archie had enough durability, and actually arguably too much, when he could leap realibly, he doesn’t have the durability to do any kind of bite and hold maneuvers because he is regularly 1 rounded now.

[Thatguy]

29 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

the Rider has Archie beat by a large amount

Rider is also 2 as more. Picking it over Archie and an upgrade or 2 of hand fixing doesn't seem that huge a difference. 

31 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Archie had enough durability, and actually arguably too much, when he could leap realibly, he doesn’t have the durability to do any kind of bite and hold maneuvers because he is regularly 1 rounded now.

Are you arguing that he is too durable or not durable enough?

Getting a 4+ Mask in hand is not difficult by any stretch. 

[Thatguy]

I crunched the numbers. The chance of drawing a 4+mask in a 6 card hand, with no additional draws or fixing and not being willing to use a red Joker, is 72.5% assuming you don't need to leap turn one, your up to roughly 92.4% chance without any additional card draw or fixing by turn 2. 

 

Ignoring the second senario, if you're willing to burn a card from your hand, Archie is able to leap 72.5% of the time you want him to.

 

[Fetid Strumpet]

I’m arguing he isn’t durable or reliable enough for his cost. The rider is reliable, Archie is not. Competitive models are low variance models because the game itself already has such high variance you cannot count on anything that isn’t.

If his leap was reliable, then he has arguably too much durability. If he leap is unreliable (which it is now) then he isn’t durable enough for the role he is going to be forced into, a Bite and Hold piece. He is regularly one rounded whenever he tries to stand up and force engagement, instead of relying on hit and run tactics.

While your math may or may not be correct, you are discounting the fact that there is a sizable amount of masks in the deck would generally be a waste to spend on leap. If I have to spend an 11+ on leaping then that is seriously degrading the functionality of the crew. You aren’t likely to get very many high cards, and if you have to spend one of them on leaping you’ve just significantly degraded your entire crew’s defensive options, offensive options, and so on. At that point, again, just hire another model that doesn’t have that problem. At the moment I feel you can mostly just remove Archie and Slot in Manos or the Rider in all crews, including Molly’s. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

6 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

I crunched the numbers. The chance of drawing a 4+mask in a 6 card hand, with no additional draws or fixing and not being willing to use a red Joker, is 72.5% assuming you don't need to leap turn one, your up to roughly 92.4% chance without any additional card draw or fixing by turn 2. 

Ignoring the second senario, if you're willing to burn a card from your hand, Archie is able to leap 72.5% of the time you want him to.

Which is pretty terrible.

Almost every other ability in the game, if you want it to go off, it'll go off (except times with a higher opposing stat and your opponent doesn't want it to go off).

So even if you're willing to use a 13 of masks, you're still struggling for it to to go off (with over a 25% baseline failure rate). Most tactical actions have closer to a 1/54 failure rate if you are willing to cheat your highest card.

[Maniacal_cackle]

5 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

At the moment I feel you can mostly just remove Archie and Slot in Manos or the Rider in all crews, including Molly’s. 

I think for Molly you do the swap, but also then have to either grab P&N for the crooligans or swap to Night Terrors.

But yeah, for tournaments will definitely test out dropping Archie entirely for Manos.

IMO, our best non-master beaters are probably Rider, Manos, and Valedictorian. In some situations, carrion emissary, Anna Lovelace, or vincent.

So Archie is now middle of the ranking rather than top 3. That is actually probably okay from a power perspective (a top model shouldn't necessarily stay top), but my complaints about the nerf remain (destroyed him competitively, high variance, killed off his role in his keyword).

[farmoar]

2 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Or just hire a necropunk. A large portion of his cost is tied up in his hitting potential, and there is no reason to pay for that if it’s unreliable, and since he can’t focus it’s inherently unreliable. If you need him for mobility you might as well hire 2 necropunks for about the same cost as 1 of him and an upgrade.

Not really an option in Forgotten, or more specifically, as a Crooligan delivery system.

[Thatguy]

10 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

 

So even if you're willing to use a 13 of masks, you're still struggling for it to to go off (with over a 25% baseline failure rate). Most tactical actions have closer to a 1/54 failure rate if you are willing to cheat your highest card.

Fair point. 

I guess I was looking at it more as the difference and not the increase. An additional 25.6% chance of not being able to when you want to doesn't seem so bad to me, especially when you'll have a good chance of knowing whether you can in advance.

Looking at it from the other perspective, going from 1.9% chance of falling to 27.5% seems like a fairly drastic increase in unreliability.

[Maniacal_cackle]

10 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

Fair point. 

I guess I was looking at it more as the difference and not the increase. An additional 25.6% chance of not being able to when you want to doesn't seem so bad to me, especially when you'll have a good chance of knowing whether you can in advance.

Looking at it from the other perspective, going from 1.9% chance of falling to 27.5% seems like a fairly drastic increase in unreliability.

In competitive magic, 90% reliability is a (somewhat arbitrary) threshold most people use for consistency. While it doesn't translate immediately over (Malifaux is a much more consistent game than Magic), it does show how even a high percent chance actually feels very inconsistent in competitive play.

I'll also note that I think from a power perspective the nerf was probably okay.

I just hate the game design behind it, and also hate potentially having to buy new models to get back to a similar power level.

[Adran]

22 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Which is pretty terrible.

Almost every other ability in the game, if you want it to go off, it'll go off (except times with a higher opposing stat and your opponent doesn't want it to go off).

So even if you're willing to use a 13 of masks, you're still struggling for it to to go off (with over a 25% baseline failure rate). Most tactical actions have closer to a 1/54 failure rate if you are willing to cheat your highest card.

That's not really a fair comparison. Or true. I'm fairly sure I miss a lot of the attacks I make in a game. Sure, I can probably make one or two hit, but I make lots of attacks in a turn in general. 

You're less likely to get your top summon combination than leap for most summoners. 

It's a resource game. You need to manage your resources, and sometimes bad things happen. 

If you want no variance then should we just remove all TN from the game? And probably any duels.

In second edition I played a Marcus leap list for certain games. Every model bar Marcus ( and sometimes the spawn mother) had leap. I knew I could not get leap off with every model every turn, but I also knew which ones mattered.  Some needed suits some needed higher numbers, and I actually liked that I had to maximise my use of my cards to get what I wanted. So I like to think I understand a little about the use of a model with an unsuited leap. 

It might also be because I learnt to play in first edition when you had no way to add suits to any duels, you just had to hope you could get the cards even on your master. 

 

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

19 minutes ago, Adran said:

That's not really a fair comparison. Or true. I'm fairly sure I miss a lot of the attacks I make in a game. Sure, I can probably make one or two hit, but I make lots of attacks in a turn in general. 

You're less likely to get your top summon combination than leap for most summoners. 

It's a resource game. You need to manage your resources, and sometimes bad things happen. 

If you want no variance then should we just remove all TN from the game? And probably any duels.

In second edition I played a Marcus leap list for certain games. Every model bar Marcus ( and sometimes the spawn mother) had leap. I knew I could not get leap off with every model every turn, but I also knew which ones mattered.  Some needed suits some needed higher numbers, and I actually liked that I had to maximise my use of my cards to get what I wanted. So I like to think I understand a little about the use of a model with an unsuited leap. 

It might also be because I learnt to play in first edition when you had no way to add suits to any duels, you just had to hope you could get the cards even on your master. 

Yes, there is certainly a variance sweet spot. I think I've mentioned in previous posts, one of the counterintuitive aspects of game design is you need variance/chance for failure. Or everything homogenises.

My (personal) opinion is that Archie's leap was already in that sweet spot. It would organically fail over 1/3 of the time, and you could save a card to prevent that failure (and believe me, the discard hungry forgotten crew felt that card). I love in Malifaux that you can 'cheat fate' (literally 😜 ) and typically force through at least one key outcome per turn, even if it is just a leap.

As for summoning, there is a big difference between not being able to summon at all with variance (Forgotten Marshal) and not being able to summon your biggest summon. Most summoners fall in the category of being able to summon *something*.

Archie is now super high variance, with either having his best outcome or nothing at all. If summoners followed that same pattern, Dashel could summon an executioner or nothing. That'd be pretty terrible game experience.

IMO, it was the rest of Archie's kit that was a problem. Personally as a Forgotten player I'd rather have seen Archie drop to min 2 damage (destroying his status as an OOK beater) than see this change to his leap. Of course, story wise that wouldn't work.

Of course, they'll never make everyone happy with every nerf, and overall I'm quite pleased with the changes they made.

One last thing is they could have made mournful memories into a non-bonus action, giving him a tool to leap when necessary in exchange for two successful duels, an action, and a bonus action. But that'd have made him weaker against manipulative and serene countenance (which I think would be fine, everything needs a weakness and Archie thematically should be easy to manipulate).

EDIT: and to reiterate, this is all of course personal preference. I think from a power level perspective, the magnitude of the change was reasonably small. Just annoying and clunky to play. Previously I thoroughly enjoyed the crazy card cycling shenanigans of Molly and carefully managing my hand size, cheating duels I shouldn't just to get my hand down... Now that whole playstyle clashes with Archie, as you have to save a mask for him.