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Opinions Wanted on the State of Competitive Play


jerhien

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Morning Faulx!

I used to be on a competitively focused Malifaux Podcast centered in the PNW - we all took a break right around the launch of M3E, and are tentatively looking at getting back into the game. Obviously in-person events in the states are still a terrible idea, so none of that, but it would be really helpful to hear about what's doing well these days. I've read that Shenlong and Nekima were strong, but that they both received some targeted nerfs. I used to be a Sonnia Criid main, but I look at what they've done to my girl and despair.

I see that Third Floor Wars started the national circuit, which is great, but I don't see a place that faction/master placements are tracked.

So I guess I'm looking for what Masters are currently top dogs, and a brief explanation of why, and what factions.

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8 hours ago, jerhien said:

Morning Faulx!

I used to be on a competitively focused Malifaux Podcast centered in the PNW - we all took a break right around the launch of M3E, and are tentatively looking at getting back into the game. Obviously in-person events in the states are still a terrible idea, so none of that, but it would be really helpful to hear about what's doing well these days. I've read that Shenlong and Nekima were strong, but that they both received some targeted nerfs. I used to be a Sonnia Criid main, but I look at what they've done to my girl and despair.

I see that Third Floor Wars started the national circuit, which is great, but I don't see a place that faction/master placements are tracked.

So I guess I'm looking for what Masters are currently top dogs, and a brief explanation of why, and what factions.

I think a lot of it is still up in the air, so most of it is opinion. I haven't even personally faced half of the masters in the game, but I can tell you what I think is strong. 

Personally: I have never won against Dreamer or Yan Lo. I've never even tied them and nearly all my games ended with me tabled. For Dreamer, Lucid Dreaming (the ability to permanently remove low cards from your deck) is a phenomenal ability; you kind of cannot lose a duel turns 3-5, so if you can make it to that point then you are golden. Problem is, that Dreamer's crew also has the most Min 3 models in the game, so he can delete models early in the game as well. Furthermore, he has the best healer in the game in the form of Serena Bowman. These combined means going aggressive early against what is supposed to be a hyper scaling crew is very difficult.

For Yan Lo, imo, Chiyaki's Spirit Flute kind of broke the crew. The main mechanics of Yan Lo are his Ascendancy, and the ability to bring back important models from their Reliquary upgrades. So Yan Lo has very poor base stats, but the catch is that every turn he attaches a new upgrade, which both gives him a new ability and adds +1 to his duel totals. So in theory, you want to strike him hard early when he is weak before he has time to ramp up. The problem is that his upgrades are bonkers good to the point of trivializing his low stats. In theory you want to attach the upgrade that benefits you most in the current game state. In practice, you attach the one that gives you Incorporeal turn one, and the one that gives the permanent Hazardous, Concealing aura turn 2. These two upgrades by themselves make it very difficult to kill him, and if you even try you are going to take Hazardous damage. And that isn't even considering his Demise ability, healing action, Sun Qyiang (contender for best healer in the game), two different minions with Take the Hit, Extended Reach, and the multitude of hard hitting models at his disposal which likely havent activated yet, since remember you tried to go in early before he could activate on turn 3 and go up to def 6. It just makes him an extremely powerful late game master (as he should be) but also practically unkillable barring a serious mistake from your opponent. And then, we get to the Spirit Flute. So in theory the way Yan Lo's crew is supposed to work is that you have the powerful named Ancestors and their Retainer followers. The Ancestors hand out a Reliquary upgrade to a nearby model when they die, which both gives out a unique buff based on the particular model, and allows Yan Lo to Replace the model currently holding the Upgrade with the original model. So, you want Izamu in the mix. You charge him in with a loyal Gokudo at his side, and do some damage. In retaliation, your opponents kills Izamu. Izamu gives his upgrade to the Gokudo, who gains the Armor +1 and Ruthless abilities. Yan Lo then Replaces that Gokudo with a new, full health Izamu and summons a new Gokudo on a table edge. You are supposed to try to keep your minions near the beaters to catch their souls if they die, and then need to get that soul back to Yan Lo to get your beater back. But Chiyaki's Spirit Flute just allows you attach the Reliquary of one model to another, while it is still alive. This completely negates the risk of charging your important models in, since you have the back up Reliquary safe somewhere else, and also allow you to get the very powerful benefits of the upgrade without that model dying. Finally, Yan Lo's crew his hard is is probably the most survivable in the game. Their weakness is supposed to be their lack of speed, but the crew is actually really fast, between 3 different ways of pushing your own models up the board as well as Manos and Yin both just being very mobile. 

Top Dogs: As far as what other people are saying right now, Summoners are very strong as always. I'll go Faction by Faction and list which masters people are calling strong. Let me know if you want more specific detail, if I can provide it. 

Arcanist: Sansdeep- extremely versatile hiring and summoning pool allows him to adapt the crew to any situation. Crazy bonker's card draw thanks to Kandara's Mantra.

                Colette - the sheer number of Scheme markers the crew effortlessly creates, combined with nearly universal Don't Mind Me makes it extremely difficult to stop the Performers form                           scoring their schemes. 

 

Bayou: Sommer - brings the highest volume of models of any master, which should be cheap and easy to kill, however several Auras in the crew buff everyone's stats which actually makes them                quite tough to hit. Then, Sommer actually gets rewarded when you manage to kill something, and has a powerful ability to pump out damage without being resisted by the opponent.

           Ophelia - hits very hard from very far and is very tough to put down. They gain bonuses when fighting Bigger opponents (so everyone but other Bayou crews) and gain Shielded when                    you attack them. 

            Zipp -  Very fast crew so it can be tough to prevent them from scoring. In addition, they have multiple ways of making it difficult to score your own schemes, primarily dropping Piano's                     onto the table which lock up sections of the board until you destroy them. 

           It's important to call out the Lucky Emissary here for this edition, since it is the best carrier for Corrupted Lodestones in the game. 

 

Guild: HAHAHAHAHAHAH

 

Neverborn: Overall, people seem to feel that Neverborn are weak right now due to a lack of cheap scheme runners. I think all their masters look at least solid, if not blowing my mind. The big crews here are

                    Zoraida - Powerful, long range Obeys that can be arced through her Keyword models means not only is she pulling you out of position, but she's spending your resources to hurt your own models.   

                     Dreamer 

                     Nekima - Powerful, fast, flying models which can easily stack focus on themselves make Nephilim the best Alpha Strike crew in the game hands down.                                         When playing Nekima the game is always over by turn 3 initiative, you've either tabled them or they've tabled you. 

 

Outcasts:    Leveticus - is the uncontested King. He himself hits extremely hard, IRREDUCIBLE damage, and his totems act as extra backup lives, allowing him to                          play aggressively. In addition, his crew is focused on the attrition game, damage you for attacking them (whether you hit or not), move wounds around                        to other models, and can heal, albiet fairly expensively. They also have conditional summoning, Rusty Alice's min 3, ranged, Rapid Fire, Exciting gun,                             and Ashes and Dust, who reforms if you manage to kill him. 

                    Parker Barrows - Easy access to fast, passive scheme marker dropping, and lots of guns makes this keyword very good at killing, very good at                                      scheming. In addition, they generate a lot of resources, both Cards and Soulstones. 

                    Tara - Right now the most competitive players consider Tara hot trash, both because she was nerfed in GG1, and because 2 of the 4 strategies explicitly call out her mechanics and prevent them (Burying). I'd keep an eye on her though, since Cody is still undefeated in all tournaments with Tara, and I think that when we get to GG 2 she's going to reclaim her throne.

 

Ressers:  What I've been hearing is that all the Resser masters are solid, but a few really shine. 

                  Prof. Von Schtook - A summoner whose keyword models nearly all have both Armor and Hard to Wound, a powerful, rare combination that makes them very tough to kill. They pay for it with very poor defensive stats however. The trick to watch out for in this crew is the turn 1 Alpha Strike. The Valedictorian generally gets Focus, Fast, and pushed up the board before Flying into your crew for 3 - 5 stat 7 attacks. Then, the Undergraduates can use By Your Side to GLOBALLY TELEPORT to her position, and get a free attack for doing so. Imo, the best ability in the crew is Von Schook's Recruitment Drive. This allows them to drop a free Scheme whenever they kill an enemy model anywhere on the board (so long as Schook is still alive). This, combined with the fact that in order to get their summons off they also need to kill your models, mean that every one of the models in Schook's crew is focused entirely on just killing your crew. This makes them extremely efficient, since by attacking you they A) Remove your Model  B) Gain a new model  C) Score their Schemes, all for just running at you and forcing you to brawl with them. 

               Kirai -  A dedicated, attrition summoner. Similar to Leveticus, her models damage you back if you damage them. They also have nearly universal incorporeal with both makes them quite tanky, mobile, and ignore any terrain shenanigans your crew is doing. Kirai's Totem, the Ikiyrio, is unique in that it is an enforcer that can be resummoned. Oh, and it also has stat 6, Onslaught, Irreducible attacks, can't be Slowed or Stunned because of Shrug Off, and gets a 2nd Activation in the turn if you kill it and it gets resummoned. This creates a lose-lose situation. Kirai throws the Ikiyrio at you like a nuclear warhead. If you kill it, great you took damage from Vengeance, and it gets resummoned, and gets right back in your face. If you ignore it, with move 6 and incorporeal its going to Charge right at your most important model and kill it because irreducible damage yay. 

            Seamus - In general people consider Seasmus to be a very strong Master with a very weak keyword. For this reason, Seamus crews tend to run almost entirely out of Keyword or Versatile, of which Ressers have a fantastic selection, or hire him as a 2nd master into another crew (which you can do now). Seamus' gun has the best, unmodified damage track in the game, at 4/6/8, with the restriction that it can only be used once per Activation. By itself this means that Seamus doesn't mind spending an Action to Concentrate before firing, which cancels out any single negative modifier as well as makes him likely to hit that severe of 8. However, Seamus' Bonus Action allows him to take an Action by removing a Corpse Marker on the opponent's table half, IGNORING AND RESTRICTIONS. Thus, Seamus can use his bonus to fire the GUN a second time, or to do general actions like take the Interact Action while engaged. Normally, you would get corpse markers by killing enemy models. However, the Ressers have several models that can summon Mindless Zombies at range which count as Corpse Markers. For this reason, you almost always see a Carrion Emissary in an Seamus crew. Finally, Seamus' Secret Passage Action allows him to teleport next to any piece of Blocking terrain with 12" (if he starts within an inch of Blocking terrain) which makes it difficult to stop him from scoring schemes and impossible to stop him from reaching your backfield (hello Symbols of Authority). 

Ten Thunders:   Every crew in the 10 thunders is nutty because they are untested filth. It would be easier to list the bad models than the good ones. A big reason for this is that the Thunders have the best Versatile hiring pool in the game. They have the most Versatile models, and the models that they have are incredible. Just remember, that no matter what master your opponent declares, they could always drop an all versatile crew that plays extremely different from what you where expecting. In particular, expect to see two Samurai with Trained Ninja upgrades often (Armor 2, Stealth, Concentrate as a Bonus Action with a 2/4/6 12" Range, and they can deploy anywhere on the board except the opponents deployment zone) as well as Fuhatsu and Tanuki (Focus the everloving crap out of the 2/4/6 12" Range, Rapid Firing, Ruthless Henchman with a Built in Positive Flip and Crit Strike). But aside from that small caveat, here are what I hear people saying are the best masters

                          Shen Long - Still really good. Chi is a strong keyword ability, versatile hiring pool, ability to transfer conditions to or from enemy models unresisted, ability to ignore all defensive tech in the game (though not at the same time, he also puts on upgrades). For me tho, the most bullshit thing about Shenlong is that his Wandering River Upgrade allows him to pick up and move up to three markers at range, which are often his or your scheme markers. This makes it next to impossible to deny his schemes, and next to impossible to score your own schemes if he or his totems are unactivated. Oh yea that's right, he gets two totems, both of which are capable of copying the Actions from Shenlong's currently equipped upgrade, at a stat 5 for some reason even though every other totem in the game that copies actions does so at stat 4. Shrug.

                          Lucas Mccabe - Solid card draw, Hands out powerful upgrades, which also give his models fast, and is still yet to get half his keyword (they will be revealed whenever the new faction, the Explorer's Society, is released). In particular, the Timeworn Blade allows his models to ignore most defensive tech. Watch out for the Hucksters, cheap minions that also have the secret passage ability which makes them excellent scheme runners. What really pushes him over the edge however are the sheer number of simple duel his is going to make you take form Make Way and Rear Up. He's either going to make you take a ton of extra damage, or burn your whole hand, and then still still take a ton of damage. 

                        Asami - The faction's Summoner. Has both hard hitting and fast models so she can scheme or kill quite well. Her Keyword has the Flicker mechanic, which allows them to gain a Flicker token before an attack to gain a positive to the Attack and the Damage, which stacks with focus. The catch is, after resolving an Action that leaves them with 3 Flicker they poof out of existence, so choosing when to use it or who to remove it from is important. What makes her disgusting is the Emissary, which lets you redraw your hand. This combined with her Arcane reservoir allows her to search 14 cards for a 13, and therefore can very reliably summon a Jorugumo each turn. 

 

 

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For Guild, just worth noting that many people consider Dashel incredibly powerful this season.

Another point is that the 'top' masters will change significantly each season with errata and objective updates.

A third point is that skill enormously dwarfs crew strength, and matchups can have a large impact as well (Molly is super strong, but not against Shenlong). So what is strong may depend on your local meta.

Fourth, probably the best thing to do is just get some games in. I consider the game balanced-ish, and you can do some cool stuff with most factions/crews.

Right, to your main question, some thoughts on Ressers:

Most of the masters feel top tier to me. Seamus, Von Schtook, Kirai, and I hear Yan Lo are exceptionally good.

Neverborn are currently considered a bit weak by some, although I think a lot of that is due to how hard they are to play. I suspect the same applies to Guild, judging by that Russian player's performance.

Follow the UK and Russian meta to get some good competitive insights.

Finally, I don't find summoners overall to be overpowered. Pass tokens are super strong and coupled with no interacting the turn of summoning, it seems fine to me. The broken crews are the ones that start powerful and can summon on top of that (like Dreamer).

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I think there is too much of a "Guild is bad" meme going on. Dashel's crew has an engine that generates card draw, models, focus, condition removal, and fast. Not sure a keyword can get any better than that. In fact he reminds me a lot of 2e Nicodem. 

 

Lucius and Nelly are competitive too (Especially Nelly) and the existence of the Jury alone can prevent entire keywords from being picked. 

 

As for Neverborn being "Weak", Nekima, Titania, and Dreamer are overall faring pretty well.

 

What we're generally seeing, I think, is a gravitation towards crews that can eliminate the randomness of duels/damage flips as much as possible by generating enormous card draw, focused, or otherwise altering deck/hand composition (Lucid Dreams, Misinformation, Reading the cards, etc.)

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1 hour ago, Saduhem said:

What we're generally seeing, I think, is a gravitation towards crews that can eliminate the randomness of duels/damage flips as much as possible by generating enormous card draw, focused, or otherwise altering deck/hand composition (Lucid Dreams, Misinformation, Reading the cards, etc.)

This here is so true.

My most competitive Reva list so far uses grave golem (reposition corpse candles no matter what I flip), shieldbearer (pulses focus without a flip), unburying on corpse markers (positioning without a target number), etc.

All the models that are good but don't make the cut, the reason is typically "I don't want more TNs in the crew eating my hand."

I feel like if you're playing a six card crew, you need to put a LOT of emphasis on building a card efficient crew.

Molly on the other hand... Yes please I'll take my 12-15 cards (though is much harder to do after the Archie nerf).

EDIT: although I think lucid dreams is overhyped. Far better to build an elite crew with two ancient pacts IMO. I struggle to picture having a turn 3 with dreamer where I am not already dominating xD

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There are definitely strong masters but I think there is less of a tail at the moment. Of course it’s all meta dependant. Zoraida is still strong, Leveticus is good, Dreamer is great and Von Schtook is very strong. I think there are masters with untapped potential because not a lot of people play them at the moment. I’m yet to Somer in action this edition, I think he is going to be good.

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5 hours ago, Saduhem said:

I think there is too much of a "Guild is bad" meme going on. Dashel's crew has an engine that generates card draw, models, focus, condition removal, and fast. Not sure a keyword can get any better than that. In fact he reminds me a lot of 2e Nicodem. 

 

Lucius and Nelly are competitive too (Especially Nelly) and the existence of the Jury alone can prevent entire keywords from being picked. 

 

As for Neverborn being "Weak", Nekima, Titania, and Dreamer are overall faring pretty well.

 

What we're generally seeing, I think, is a gravitation towards crews that can eliminate the randomness of duels/damage flips as much as possible by generating enormous card draw, focused, or otherwise altering deck/hand composition (Lucid Dreams, Misinformation, Reading the cards, etc.)

I think the issue with Guild is not that "Guild is bad" but "Guild keywords are bad" . A lot of them don't have synergies and there's a lot of meh models so you have to rely on OOK/Versatile hires.

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My quick pass on masters:

Best – Dashel, Von Schtook, Dreamer, Colette, Sandeep, Leveticus, Som’er, McCabe, Asami

Better – Nellie, Lucius, Seamus, Kirai, Molly, Jack Daw, Yan Lo, Pandora, Zoraida, Titania, Nekima, Ironsides, Parker, Zipp, Ophelia, Mah, Shenlong, Misaki

Good – Lady J, Perdita, Hoffman, Reva, McMourning, Kaeirs, Rasputina, Mei Fang, Viktorias, Von Schill, Tara, Ulix, Wong, Brewmaster, Lynch, Youko

OK – Basse, Sonia, Marcus, Euripides, Hamelin

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On 8/23/2020 at 3:33 PM, jerhien said:

Morning Faulx!

I used to be on a competitively focused Malifaux Podcast centered in the PNW - we all took a break right around the launch of M3E.....

What was your podcast @jerhien?  I use to listen to lots so probably listened to at least a few episodes (forgive me, I don't understand the initial PNW)

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One important piece of information is that the various parts of the world are not all playing the same game. The UK is largely playing the singles format, which is less common else where (I think both Russia and USA are predominantly rule book). I think there are some places using DMH as well. So just knowing what is doing well in certain places won't give you the full picture.

 

Likewise local factors have a huge effect on "best masters", there are several groups that find they normally only play 3 or 4 turn games because they don't have time to play 5 rounds. This leads to a very different power rating for Crews that change in power levels (such as Yan Lo or the dreamer who are stronger in later game or styles like alpha strike which are weaker late game when they are dead).

 

  

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1 hour ago, HowNot2Wargame said:

What was your podcast @jerhien?  I use to listen to lots so probably listened to at least a few episodes (forgive me, I don't understand the initial PNW)

Pacific North West.... typically the states of Washington & Oregon (some claim the northern most counties of California [older folks call that area Lincoln, which is an even longer story]) of the United States of America.

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36 minutes ago, Jesy Blue said:

Pacific North West.... typically the states of Washington & Oregon (some claim the northern most counties of California [older folks call that area Lincoln, which is an even longer story]) of the United States of America.

Hey - our podcast was "Bad Things Happen" - we were playing out of Tacoma, Washington. Basically from Portland Oregon to Seattle was our area.

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I appreciate all the responses - it makes sense to me that the powerful stuff is still non-interactve - or when it does interact it does so in a way that really skews the margin of error. 

We've always had a really strong 10T player in my area, and if i get back into the game I'm up in the air between 10T, Outcasts, and Neverborn. 

10T's access to focus, draw, and scheme manipulation always seemed over the top to me - Shenlong was gross last edition too and as I look at his card he still seems really strong. 

Levi, Sandeep, Collette, Dreamer. The more things change, the more they stay the same i guess. 

Seems like really bricky brawling lists are on the outs? One of my locals is an Ironsides player who got touched in a real bad way by Levi at the launch of M3E and is still sore about it - but hey counters exist. 

We were discussing the different formats - is there a consensus between single and multiple master formats?

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I'm sad that they didn't move to some kind of clock for the game in M3E - i understand that it's tricky, but the idea that we have to discuss the power of late game masters in a way that accounts for them potentially not getting to see the late rounds is a problem. 

After the first few months of play we very rarely ever had a game go to time - if you can't finish the round with what you bring to an event, I've always felt you shouldn't bring it. 

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3 hours ago, jerhien said:

I appreciate all the responses - it makes sense to me that the powerful stuff is still non-interactve - or when it does interact it does so in a way that really skews the margin of error. 

We've always had a really strong 10T player in my area, and if i get back into the game I'm up in the air between 10T, Outcasts, and Neverborn. 

10T's access to focus, draw, and scheme manipulation always seemed over the top to me - Shenlong was gross last edition too and as I look at his card he still seems really strong. 

Levi, Sandeep, Collette, Dreamer. The more things change, the more they stay the same i guess. 

Seems like really bricky brawling lists are on the outs? One of my locals is an Ironsides player who got touched in a real bad way by Levi at the launch of M3E and is still sore about it - but hey counters exist. 

We were discussing the different formats - is there a consensus between single and multiple master formats?

There is a place for bricky lists, and Ironsides is very solid this edition. In my opinion all master have play. One of the best changes to 3rd edition is that you reveal Leader before crew, so if your opponent declares Levi you can build your crew to help prepare for that. 

As for 2nd masters, as I understand it the UK declared them too powerful and banned them universally, the Russians dont seem to care about 2nd masters, and the US is fragmented by region. As always. 

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Second masters vs single masters come down to preference really.

Second masters have more 'broken' combos, so the scope of what is playable in some scenarios gets quite small. Counter picking the enemy's main master becomes a lot easier (McMourning as a second master against Hoffman for example). However, you have no knowledge of the second master so can't prepare for it (second master Zoraida attracts a lot of complaints, as you have to build your crew with Zoraida in mind).

Single masters by contrast, basically everything is viable, but rough matchups are more common (though you won't get surprised by OOK masters). So it can be a bit of a matchup lottery (though not really as you declare faction first, so you can declare a master with no weak matchups in the enemy faction).

Single master is also a lot more new player friendly, since most things are viable. Double master is just so cutthroat, that the meta will really settle on certain combos IMO (summoning master + card draw master is a frequent complaint).

Personally I like single masters more. For me I like the variety, and the strategic thinking in the start of game. It is a lot harder to plan for your opponents crew in second masters, so then you just focus on building powerful combos yourself.

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14 hours ago, jerhien said:

I appreciate all the responses - it makes sense to me that the powerful stuff is still non-interactve - or when it does interact it does so in a way that really skews the margin of error. 

We've always had a really strong 10T player in my area, and if i get back into the game I'm up in the air between 10T, Outcasts, and Neverborn. 

10T's access to focus, draw, and scheme manipulation always seemed over the top to me - Shenlong was gross last edition too and as I look at his card he still seems really strong. 

Levi, Sandeep, Collette, Dreamer. The more things change, the more they stay the same i guess. 

Seems like really bricky brawling lists are on the outs? One of my locals is an Ironsides player who got touched in a real bad way by Levi at the launch of M3E and is still sore about it - but hey counters exist. 

We were discussing the different formats - is there a consensus between single and multiple master formats?

I think there is a large degree of good players want control of things to make sure they know what is happening. Controlling things is harder if you have unknowns, like an opponent, messing up your odds. There is also a case that consistent good will win events, where as occasionally brilliant, occasionally rubbish will win games, but not events unless you manage to avoid the rubbish that event. (Or possibly that consistent good wins games when you don't make a mistake, occasionally brilliant may win games even when you make a mistake, but occasionally rubbish will lose games even if you don't make a mistake).

So players who focus on trying to win events are drawn to non interactive things because they are consistent, and they know what they are likely to get. An inconsistent thing, even if over all it is better, will cause game loses that are "outside of their control", and so they typically avoid those mechanisms.

Local meta makes a huge difference. For example Nekima largely only had success in the hands of Kharnmage. But he did really well with her. So lots of people that didn't play in his meta thought Nekima was bad. I think there were several people that tried to copy him, but they didn't get the same amount of success with his lists as he was getting. That might be because it had a high skill floor, so until you reached that skill level you couldn't really have success with it, or it might just have been a player style and crew style that really clicked, and when that happens with a good player it can be very hard to face. (There are similar cases with several other masters, but not quite to the same extreme as Nekima, and I don't know if its because the players didn't stick to the one master, of if it was just a case that they managed events where they were just the better player anyway, or they didn't get the "rubbish" game for that master.)

 

On second masters - the only analysis I have seen on the subject was based on 1 event (6 or 7 rounds and about 40 players I think). 2 masters was more likely to let you beat a weaker player than you, but when you were playing people of high skill (the top of the table) it was slightly less likely to win than single masters.  Its not very statistically relevant, but the idea that a new player facing 2 masters is more likely to lose doesn't surprise me. Masters are much more forgiving to use when you learn, and ask questions that you often have to answer, and until you have a certain level of skill you really struggle to answer them.

Personally I think both ways are fine, but they will generate different meta information that can be quite hard to compare.

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38 minutes ago, Adran said:

Local meta makes a huge difference. For example Nekima largely only had success in the hands of Kharnmage. But he did really well with her. So lots of people that didn't play in his meta thought Nekima was bad. I think there were several people that tried to copy him, but they didn't get the same amount of success with his lists as he was getting

Malifaux is a very complex game, so one can't simply take a good list from the forum and win. "Ultimate" lists are usually more complicated than just "take good models to do what they are good at". Deep understanding of how this list works (why was it built this way, when should it be taken etc) is required to get success. 

11 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Double master is just so cutthroat, that the meta will really settle on certain combos IMO (summoning master + card draw master is a frequent complaint).

Power level of double master is overrated (mostly by people with little experience with and against them). My meta allowed double masters from the very beginning of open beta, and the more we play - the more I see high skilled players successfully running single master lists. 

 

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3 minutes ago, Scoffer said:

Power level of double master is overrated (mostly by people with little experience with and against them). My meta allowed double masters from the very beginning of open beta, and the more we play - the more I see high skilled players successfully running single master lists. 

I think 85% dual master lists are bad. 10% are decent and probably the last 5% are strong. The strongest I found was Kirai + Molly and Nellie + Dashel.

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The reason dual masters were banned into the UK competitive scene wasn't specifically power level. It was that the 5/10% of dual master combos that were strong were appearing all the time. 

 

We are a relatively small meta  even as a country and we wanted to avoid this stagnation. 

 

For the record, the Guild hate is unnecessary, they have some really strong masters that compete at top table. They just have a few more masters that sit below the curve and each keyword could probably do with tweaks to models. 

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50 minutes ago, Scoffer said:

Power level of double master is overrated (mostly by people with little experience with and against them). My meta allowed double masters from the very beginning of open beta, and the more we play - the more I see high skilled players successfully running single master lists. 

I confess I've not that much experience with double masters, and I've never lost to them (outside the Viks), but I also have never played anything that felt as strong as when I did Dreamer/Zoraida. Do you have any comments on that specifically?

17 minutes ago, S4lt said:

The reason dual masters were banned into the UK competitive scene wasn't specifically power level. It was that the 5/10% of dual master combos that were strong were appearing all the time. 

We are a relatively small meta  even as a country and we wanted to avoid this stagnation. 

 

This is what I was getting at. Some specific combos just seem so overwhelmingly strong I would expect them to appear a great deal (while most double master combos are complete jank or situational).

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13 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:
1 hour ago, Scoffer said:

Power level of double master is overrated (mostly by people with little experience with and against them). My meta allowed double masters from the very beginning of open beta, and the more we play - the more I see high skilled players successfully running single master lists. 

I confess I've not that much experience with double masters, and I've never lost to them (outside the Viks), but I also have never played anything that felt as strong as when I did Dreamer/Zoraida. Do you have any comments on that specifically?

I haven't seen this on the table, but combinations of Dreamer with other Neverborn masters (Dreamer+Titania, Pandora+Dreamer+Titania) are quite popular in my meta. Those are strong, but not stronger, than a well-built single Zoraida list. In my last three tournament games vs Neverborn I had 2 wins (Mah vs Marcus+Titania, Zipp vs Dreamer+Titania) and 1 draw (Ophelia vs Pandora+Titania+Dreamer).

In fact, the only truly broken master combo I've seen was Collodi+Zoraida, but now we allow DMH masters as single leaders only and everything is fine.

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