How is Wong Bad?

[Gearome]

Hello Everyone!

I'm a relatively inexperienced player, however, I do manage to get some casual games in fairly often. One of the masters I enjoy playing the most is Wong. There's nothing quite like flinging some Fast models with essentially free suits and some amazing mobility options with the pigapult. However, I've noticed that on several podcasts and online in general that Wong is considered to be a subpar, if not a completely unplayable master. I'm curious to hear people's opinions as to why this may be. In other words, why do so many people see Wong as weak when he can do some potentially powerful things, especially as a support master? 

Thanks for all the replies!

[ShinChan]

1 hour ago, Gearome said:

Hello Everyone!

I'm a relatively inexperienced player, however, I do manage to get some casual games in fairly often. One of the masters I enjoy playing the most is Wong. There's nothing quite like flinging some Fast models with essentially free suits and some amazing mobility options with the pigapult. However, I've noticed that on several podcasts and online in general that Wong is considered to be a subpar, if not a completely unplayable master. I'm curious to hear people's opinions as to why this may be. In other words, why do so many people see Wong as weak when he can do some potentially powerful things, especially as a support master? 

Thanks for all the replies!

Some reasons:

• Injured on his Fzzzzzap! attack is something that got changed in the Beta, but was never changed for Wong's, so that makes him worse that he was supposed to be. That Injured was supposed to work with how difficult is to pass the TN in the simple duels.
• Offensively, his damage is negligible. Against an experienced player, the possible damage that he's going to do is not going to change anything in the game.
• While as a support master he can work half-decently, after turn 2, it becomes practically impossible to take advantage of his full potential, since he can keep giving glowy and fast to everyone.
• He makes the crew work by hurting his own models, which are fairly squishy in general (with the exception of Alphonse), so they become an easy prey for the enemy models.
• He got hit pretty hard with the change of schemes in Gaining Grounds 1. During GG0 (a.k.a. the original Strategies and Schemes in the rulebook), less efficient minions like Lightning Bug were great to score some Schemes like Detonate Charges, Harness the Ley Line, Search the Ruins, Dig their Graves...
• Only Wong can interact with Glowy tokens in the enemy models, so that makes stacking Glowy in enemies quite pointless. You can compare them with Brilliance tokens or Blight tokens and you'll see what I mean.
• Unlike other masters based on "tokens" like Jakob Lynch and Hamelin, the Glowy tokens in enemy models get discarded after "using" them, which requires a lot of effort to stack the glowy for little benefit (just more damage).

Those are just a few that come to mind right now. On the good side, the crew draws a lot of cards.

Is it fun to play? Definitely. I've played around 30 games with Wong since the M3E release (I love Big Trouble in Little China too much, I know ) and I had a great time most of those games,. However, the crew struggles to perform as good as other keywords and require a lot of planning in order to achieve its maximum potential (which is still, below 90% of all the other keywords in the game).

I have a bunch of good recommendations that could be applied to fix the current issues with Wong and his crew, I shared them in this forums, FB groups and Discord, I can make a compilation if you want, but my only hope is that Wyrd's game designers address Wizz-Bang in the future.

[farmoar]

4 hours ago, Gearome said:

Hello Everyone!

I'm a relatively inexperienced player, however, I do manage to get some casual games in fairly often. One of the masters I enjoy playing the most is Wong. There's nothing quite like flinging some Fast models with essentially free suits and some amazing mobility options with the pigapult. However, I've noticed that on several podcasts and online in general that Wong is considered to be a subpar, if not a completely unplayable master. I'm curious to hear people's opinions as to why this may be. In other words, why do so many people see Wong as weak when he can do some potentially powerful things, especially as a support master? 

Thanks for all the replies!

He has to jump through a lot of hoops (and damage his own low-wound models) to get 1, MAYBE 2, turns of slightly above average performance. The other Bayou keywords just do it better.

4 hours ago, Gearome said:

There's nothing quite like flinging some Fast models with essentially free suits and some amazing mobility options with the pigapult.

There is no way to still have Fast on a model after it has been flung by the Pigapult. You may have heard it in some earlier podcasts, but due to the FAQ, this no longer works. RIP to the dream of Fast Taxidermists with Bully on them, being thrown by the Pigapult and slicing their way through the enemy forces

[Gearome]

3 hours ago, ShinChan said:

Some reasons:

• Unlike other masters based on "tokens" like Jakob Lynch and Hamelin, the Glowy tokens in enemy models get discarded after "using" them, which requires a lot of effort to stack the glowy for little benefit (just more damage).

 

As a player who often plays Lynch, that is a very good point. Thank you for your insight!

[Gearome]

28 minutes ago, farmoar said:

He has to jump through a lot of hoops (and damage his own low-wound models) to get 1, MAYBE 2, turns of slightly above average performance. The other Bayou keywords just do it better.

There is no way to still have Fast on a model after it has been flung by the Pigapult. You may have heard it in some earlier podcasts, but due to the FAQ, this no longer works. RIP to the dream of Fast Taxidermists with Bully on them, being thrown by the Pigapult and slicing their way through the enemy forces

That is a fair point.  I only really play Wong and Zipp in Bayou at the moment, so I might not have a great frame of reference.

Also, I have heard that about the Pigapult a lot, but are there any reliable/official sources for this? I know that Wong's Uncontrollable Magic and similar abilities were adressed, but the pigapult's ability doesn't appear to function in the same way. In particular the FAQ states :

Q: If a Shockwave Action is centered on a model (from an effect such as Wong’s Uncontrollable Magic), does that model suffer the effects of the Shockwave?

A: No. In such cases, Shockwave Markers aren’t dropped and instead the Shockwave is generated as a p centered on the model, which (as per Pulses pg. 31) does not affect the object from which the p is centered.

If you look at Wong's ability, it specifically states that you do not drop a shockwave marker. The same is true for other similar abilities. The only exception is the pigapult, which also has the wording of the trigger that implies that the model does take the damage.

That is to say, not that I am doubting you, but rather I find the FAQ didn't really clear much up in regards to the Pigapult, rather it muddied the waters and made things less clear. Am I mistaken in assuming this?  In general I try to clear it up with my opponents beforehand, but it would be nice to have some sort of official opinion.

[farmoar]

10 minutes ago, Gearome said:

That is a fair point.  I only really play Wong and Zipp in Bayou at the moment, so I might not have a great frame of reference.

Also, I have heard that about the Pigapult a lot, but are there any reliable/official sources for this? I know that Wong's Uncontrollable Magic and similar abilities were adressed, but the pigapult's ability doesn't appear to function in the same way. In particular the FAQ states :

Q: If a Shockwave Action is centered on a model (from an effect such as Wong’s Uncontrollable Magic), does that model suffer the effects of the Shockwave?

A: No. In such cases, Shockwave Markers aren’t dropped and instead the Shockwave is generated as a p centered on the model, which (as per Pulses pg. 31) does not affect the object from which the p is centered.

If you look at Wong's ability, it specifically states that you do not drop a shockwave marker. The same is true for other similar abilities. The only exception is the pigapult, which also has the wording of the trigger that implies that the model does take the damage.

That is to say, not that I am doubting you, but rather I find the FAQ didn't really clear much up in regards to the Pigapult, rather it muddied the waters and made things less clear. Am I mistaken in assuming this?  In general I try to clear it up with my opponents beforehand, but it would be nice to have some sort of official opinion.

Wording of the trigger doesnt matter. Look through the rules questions, as it has been addressed multiple times. It worked fine before the Errata/FAQ, but now the greater Bayou community has come to the consensus that it doesnt work any longer. Go ahead, ask around.

[Gearome]

Alrighty! That's good to know. Thank you for your help!

[ShinChan]

26 minutes ago, Gearome said:

That is a fair point.  I only really play Wong and Zipp in Bayou at the moment, so I might not have a great frame of reference.

Also, I have heard that about the Pigapult a lot, but are there any reliable/official sources for this? I know that Wong's Uncontrollable Magic and similar abilities were adressed, but the pigapult's ability doesn't appear to function in the same way. In particular the FAQ states :

Q: If a Shockwave Action is centered on a model (from an effect such as Wong’s Uncontrollable Magic), does that model suffer the effects of the Shockwave?

A: No. In such cases, Shockwave Markers aren’t dropped and instead the Shockwave is generated as a p centered on the model, which (as per Pulses pg. 31) does not affect the object from which the p is centered.

If you look at Wong's ability, it specifically states that you do not drop a shockwave marker. The same is true for other similar abilities. The only exception is the pigapult, which also has the wording of the trigger that implies that the model does take the damage.

That is to say, not that I am doubting you, but rather I find the FAQ didn't really clear much up in regards to the Pigapult, rather it muddied the waters and made things less clear. Am I mistaken in assuming this?  In general I try to clear it up with my opponents beforehand, but it would be nice to have some sort of official opinion.

I made the same argument as you just did, and I share your vision on how it works. Sadly for us, appears to be that the Malifaux community leaned to the other interpretation.

All the info about the discussion in the following thread:

 

[Adran]

9 hours ago, Gearome said:

 

Q: If a Shockwave Action is centered on a model (from an effect such as Wong’s Uncontrollable Magic), does that model suffer the effects of the Shockwave?

A: No. In such cases, Shockwave Markers aren’t dropped and instead the Shockwave is generated as a p centered on the model, which (as per Pulses pg. 31) does not affect the object from which the p is centered.

If you look at Wong's ability, it specifically states that you do not drop a shockwave marker. The same is true for other similar abilities. The only exception is the pigapult, which also has the wording of the trigger that implies that the model does take the damage.

That is to say, not that I am doubting you, but rather I find the FAQ didn't really clear much up in regards to the Pigapult, rather it muddied the waters and made things less clear. Am I mistaken in assuming this?  In general I try to clear it up with my opponents beforehand, but it would be nice to have some sort of official opinion.

The argument I make is that the pigapult action is an effect that centers a shockwave on a model. As such it meets the criteria for the question.

It does have slightly different wording to Uncontrolled magic. But then there is nothing else in the game quite like uncontrolled magic (There are other shockwave actions that also give you the choice to center the shockwave on a model rather than a marker with similar wording, but that is in the action not as a general ability, so you could easily make effectively the same argument's that "Look doves" is also a different sort of effect than Wongs uncontrolled magic).

The Pigapult is the only one which forces you to center it on a model, every other one is optional, so the difference in wording is because of that (or so I believe). It also has the shockwave happen part way through the action.

 

[Math Mathonwy]

Another problem with Wong is that his keyword lacks reliable beaters aside from Alphonse. He has great support options in Sammy and Bokors but his meat-and-potatoes of Swine-Cursed, Taxidermists and Lightning Bugs all are super squishy and even though they hit well, they don't hit quite so well that it would make their non-existent defenses workable especially since you want to be damaging them yourself. Couple that with Wong's very lackluster damage dealing abilities and he has a difficult time actually killing opposing models once the opponent knows what his deal is.

And it's all quite sad since it's easy to see how the crew was supposed to work but then all just falls a bit short and it all ends up being one of the weakest keywords in the whole game.