2-3 Best Masters Now.

[74legion 4]

Hi. I decided to start using the res. I would like to know who is the best player now who takes the 1st place? You can use a list of 2-3 of your favorites.

[Maniacal_cackle 1,281]

Ressers are blessed with a wide range of strong crews.

Even Reva, often considered the weakest, wins tournaments at times.

Seamus, Von Schtook, Kirai, Molly are all top tier and pretty flexible and are a great starting point.

Jack Daw and Yan Lo are extremely powerful but a bit more narrow.

But honestly they're all good. Go with whatever interests you the most!

[Trample 283]

I would agree they're all pretty good right now, but Von Schtook might take the top spot in my mind. 

[dannydb 221]

the best crew is the one you know best.

 

your always going to do better with the crew you know well and suits your play style over just picking the "most powerful" crew

[Arlos896 18]

All the Resser masters have game, so go with the rule of cool and pick the ones that appeal to you. Currently for me that's Molly, Yan Lo and Jack Daw

[Graf 157]

Yeah, I fully agree. We have a very solid rooster to choose from without big spikes or lows, at least in standard format. So the player behind the faction is much more important than this is the case with Malifaux anyway.

Von Schtook is often mentioned as one of the top masters, but tbh... After I started playing Jack Daw, I learned that the Professor actually is harder to play and when compared to Tormented, this really means something! So he's powerful in experienced hands, but beginners might get better result with other Masters. 

[Speedguyjp 73]

On 8/17/2020 at 4:59 AM, Maniacal_cackle said:

Ressers are blessed with a wide range of strong crews.

Even Reva, often considered the weakest, wins tournaments at times.

Seamus, Von Schtook, Kirai, Molly are all top tier and pretty flexible and are a great starting point.

Jack Daw and Yan Lo are extremely powerful but a bit more narrow.

But honestly they're all good. Go with whatever interests you the most!

Very interesting in general - I play quite a bit of Reva and find her to be extremely flexible and well rounded. If she's viewed as the weakest, it makes me think I should branch out!!

Most of my experience is with Reva and Seamus and I'd say they are both pretty good. I just like their playstyle the best. 

 

 

[Graf 157]

6 minutes ago, Speedguyjp said:

Very interesting in general - I play quite a bit of Reva and find her to be extremely flexible and well rounded. If she's viewed as the weakest, it makes me think I should branch out!!

Most of my experience is with Reva and Seamus and I'd say they are both pretty good. I just like their playstyle the best. 

The issue with Reva (after errata!) and Seamus isn't the master, but their keywords. They are our versatile/OOK keywords for a reason. Luckily Ressers does have a good selection of models there as well.

[Saduhem 1,097]

1 hour ago, Graf said:

The issue with Reva (after errata!) and Seamus isn't the master, but their keywords. They are our versatile/OOK keywords for a reason. Luckily Ressers does have a good selection of models there as well.

Redchapel as a keyword is great with corrupted Leylines. And yes, I'm talking about Belles/Sybelle too. If you manage to kidnap whoever's holding the lodestone early enough your opponent is going to score 0 or 1 from the strategy all game. Bring a Dead rider to hold the lodestone and drag your lure machines for extra fun.

I would love Reva to have an easier way to move Pyres around, perhaps through a Lampad tweak.

 

Now, if we're comparing keywords to Guard, Academic, Swampfiend and so on, they probably fall short, but that's true for all keywords that can't draw half a deck, hoard focused, and/or alpha strike turn 1.

[Maniacal_cackle 1,281]

5 hours ago, Saduhem said:

 

I would love Reva to have an easier way to move Pyres around, perhaps through a Lampad tweak.

Try having the grave golem use hurl corpse to reposition corpse candles, then kill the candle (perhaps by hurling another corpse or Reva attacking it).

Very easy to get a pyre marker wherever you need.

One of my favourite combos:

• Grave golem hurls corpse candle at already activated models clumped together.
• Bete noir charges in, something kills corpse candle (potentially bête).
• Bete positions her aura to hit two models.
• Reva uses the Unquiet Dead over and over, for high TN wp duels flipped with a minus.

It rips through models pretty fast, but the stars have to align a bit xD

[Graf 157]

5 hours ago, Saduhem said:

Redchapel as a keyword is great with corrupted Leylines. [...]

Well, a specific case isn't a rebuttal of a general observation. Reva/Seamus being played more often with versatile/OOK, even compared with any other Resser crew, is not really disputabable atm imho. Doesn't mean all their crew models are equal, doesn't mean they don't have their niche, etc. So.... I'm not really sure what your answer was aiming at?

[Saduhem 1,097]

37 minutes ago, Graf said:

Well, a specific case isn't a rebuttal of a general observation. Reva/Seamus being played more often with versatile/OOK, even compared with any other Resser crew, is not really disputabable atm imho. Doesn't mean all their crew models are equal, doesn't mean they don't have their niche, etc. So.... I'm not really sure what your answer was aiming at?

Part of what makes Malifaux different than most other wargames is that you don't have a "list" that you bring at a tournament. You pick the best tool for the job.  Having a keyword (Not specifically the master) excel in 25% of the available strategies (and be darn good in Recover Intel too, so closer to 50%) should knock it out of a hypothetical "Not good" category. Again, I'm including Belles/Sybelle in here, which are the models people typically exclude.

I guess I was addressing the statement of the keywords being a "problem". 

[Plaag 149]

seamus, jack, yanlo, schtook are most powerful; reva is the bad master/keyword

[Maniacal_cackle 1,281]

On 8/19/2020 at 9:27 AM, Saduhem said:

Part of what makes Malifaux different than most other wargames is that you don't have a "list" that you bring at a tournament. You pick the best tool for the job.  Having a keyword (Not specifically the master) excel in 25% of the available strategies (and be darn good in Recover Intel too, so closer to 50%) should knock it out of a hypothetical "Not good" category. Again, I'm including Belles/Sybelle in here, which are the models people typically exclude.

I guess I was addressing the statement of the keywords being a "problem". 

Could you elaborate on Redchapel and Recover Evidence? Do you use more keyword models so you can lure enemies closer and blow them up?

[HomelessOne 100]

Positively delighted to see you spreading out to the rest of the forum, Plaag. Why do you rate Molly below those four?  How do you feel about Yan Lo's often-cited weakness of having a slow startup that runs him afoul of time limited rounds?

[Plaag 149]

5 hours ago, HomelessOne said:

Positively delighted to see you spreading out to the rest of the forum, Plaag. Why do you rate Molly below those four?  How do you feel about Yan Lo's often-cited weakness of having a slow startup that runs him afoul of time limited rounds?

molly is not so strong as those four, and you can see how yan lo must play in the games of not so empty

[HomelessOne 100]

1 hour ago, Plaag said:

and you can see how yan lo must play in the games of not so empty

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you were trying to say here. "Play faster"?

[Plaag 149]

1 hour ago, HomelessOne said:

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you were trying to say here. "Play faster"?

u need to see video

[HomelessOne 100]

That's fair. I've been waiting for signs of his new Core box but I'd like to give the old man a spin.

[Cranky Old Man 56]

When discussing the tier level of masters there are many things to take into consideration. Let’s put aside meta, pools and opposition for the moment. The first thing I think makes a master top or not is there playability. What I mean here is, if there style of play is straightforward enough that a person who is inexperienced can pick the crew up and start winning almost immediately. The crew has to be robust with a real focused idea of want needs to be done. The harder crews that need a lot of setup can be too finnicky to be truly top tier. For example Schtook is a crew with power and their play style is quite straight forward. They are focussed on supporting each other and bashing face while it’s schemers scheme. Similarly Molly is, really all about the scheming. Sure you can beat face but her crew and abilities love a scheme heavy pool and again a player picking her up for the first time who sticks to that style of play will succeed sooner rather than later.

Reva cops criticism because honestly the crew seems to be unfocused and  my best games with Reva have been where I focus on an area of the board and go to town.

Robustness also means can they be easily countered? Schtook and Molly I would argue are the harder crews to truly counter comprehensively. Daw is great but get some ruthless and shock waves in there and he is having a harder time. Kira too with some ruthless and ways to counter her summons has a hard time. Yan Lo suffers from having a very elite crew I think. McMourning has a very sad time against crews with loads of condition removal. Seamus is like Reva, just what is he supposed to be doing?

just my two cents worth

[Adran 4,417]

2 hours ago, Cranky Old Man said:

When discussing the tier level of masters there are many things to take into consideration. Let’s put aside meta, pools and opposition for the moment. The first thing I think makes a master top or not is there playability. What I mean here is, if there style of play is straightforward enough that a person who is inexperienced can pick the crew up and start winning almost immediately. The crew has to be robust with a real focused idea of want needs to be done. The harder crews that need a lot of setup can be too finnicky to be truly top tier. For example Schtook is a crew with power and their play style is quite straight forward. They are focussed on supporting each other and bashing face while it’s schemers scheme. Similarly Molly is, really all about the scheming. Sure you can beat face but her crew and abilities love a scheme heavy pool and again a player picking her up for the first time who sticks to that style of play will succeed sooner rather than later.

I think in a lot of the tier lists, the opposite is true. People are wanting to know what masters are "best" if you put your time in and practise with them.

I'm not sure its the same this time round, but for the last 2 editions, Perdita has been a master that new players call overpowered, but experienced players call weak. And this is because of her learning curve (and some degree how to play against her). When you start her raw stats were very daunting to deal with, but against experienced opponents the stats weren't good enough to save her and she didn't have a "top" gear to get to above that. She had a relatively easy to reach "good" level, but it was very hard (if even possible) for her to reach "Great" level. If you wanted to win in a group of beginners she did well because she had easy playability, but against experienced players she really struggled, so turning up to a normal event then you would have been very surprised to see a Perdita player near the podium places.   And because of that she was generally rated lower.

I know when I talk about tiers (which isn't all that often, I believe most game results are based on player skill rather than just the power of the master) I am talking about what I consider the theoretical maximum from that master (how well they do when they are played at the very best they can be played).