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Taelor: What is She Missing?


Davos

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The problem I find with this is that Barbaros feels like a mix between Taelor and Bishop, and giving Shove Aside to Taelor would only increase that. 

Trusty Flask + Too Drunk to Care would be interesting, althoug I really would like to see maybe some interaction/buff to other Mercenary models. Something that helps other models in her crew or that makes her take advantage of her allies. 

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36 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

I think a support ability would be good. I'm struggling to think what though. Shouting Orders or Foul-mouthed Motivation would fit the new screaming model, but I don't know that Merc heavy hitters need easier access to focus.

Maybe something like Consolidate Power?

Some ability that is powerful, but minion only could be nice. 

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I feel like the problem with Welcome to Malifaux is that summoning changed dramatically from 2E to 3E. In 2E, as far as I know, most summons needed to be summoned off of some particular marker (usually corpse or scrap), where as in 3E most summoners simply will their creation into existence somewhere in an 18" bubble. That's a massive area of the board. 

Without just changing all summon Action, maybe Welcome to Malifaux could be buffed so that if a model is being summoned and the Summoner has LoS to Taylor, the summoned model must be placed within 6" of her? 

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The problem with Welcome to Malifaux is that it's a resource drain solution to an efficiency problem.  Part of what makes summoning so strong is the pressure additional AP places on an opponent.  This is why even cheap minions can be difficult to deal with.  They don't blow you off the table, but they run around and threaten to score points.  By requiring a card discard to use Welcome to Malifaux, what should be a tool against summoning is actually increasing your rate of resource expenditure. 

And since a single attack is not likely to kill most models (unless you get lucky or can spend Focus, which is another resource...), what Welcome to Malifaux really offers is the ability to convert a card for one of the AP you'd otherwise have to use to kill the summoned model.

If WtM were either Once per Activation or Once per Turn (and more likely this), it would obviously be better, but it would also be better suited to the task it is meant to perform.

I also think giving her a :crowtrigger like Drain Magic or Maim would be good.  Attacking the opponent's hand is always desirable, but also it could feed into her anti-summoning role because, in combination to WtM, it could attack the summoner's resource base.

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12 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

The problem with Welcome to Malifaux is that it's a resource drain solution to an efficiency problem.  Part of what makes summoning so strong is the pressure additional AP places on an opponent.  This is why even cheap minions can be difficult to deal with.  They don't blow you off the table, but they run around and threaten to score points.  By requiring a card discard to use Welcome to Malifaux, what should be a tool against summoning is actually increasing your rate of resource expenditure. 

And since a single attack is not likely to kill most models (unless you get lucky or can spend Focus, which is another resource...), what Welcome to Malifaux really offers is the ability to convert a card for one of the AP you'd otherwise have to use to kill the summoned model.

I agree WtM could use something, you do have to take into account a 6" place. That could be worth 2 AP on it's own.

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5 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

The problem with Welcome to Malifaux is that it's a resource drain solution to an efficiency problem.  Part of what makes summoning so strong is the pressure additional AP places on an opponent.  This is why even cheap minions can be difficult to deal with.  They don't blow you off the table, but they run around and threaten to score points.  By requiring a card discard to use Welcome to Malifaux, what should be a tool against summoning is actually increasing your rate of resource expenditure. 

And since a single attack is not likely to kill most models (unless you get lucky or can spend Focus, which is another resource...), what Welcome to Malifaux really offers is the ability to convert a card for one of the AP you'd otherwise have to use to kill the summoned model.

If WtM were either Once per Activation or Once per Turn (and more likely this), it would obviously be better, but it would also be better suited to the task it is meant to perform.

I also think giving her a :crowtrigger like Drain Magic or Maim would be good.  Attacking the opponent's hand is always desirable, but also it could feed into her anti-summoning role because, in combination to WtM, it could attack the summoner's resource base.

Well WtM also Places Taelor into base contact with the Summoned model, which would prevent it from just running off and Scheming. Furthermore, Summoning had multiple strengths outside of just raw AP advantage; many people for example would say that the additional wounds the crew gets from the Summoned model is an important part of the benefit of summoning it. Getting a free attack on it diminishes the value of those wounds. 

So in essence, the enemy Summoner has likely spent 1. an Action  2. A high card from their hand  3. A Stone.

Taelor, in response, spends  1. a card of any value from her hand to  2. GAIN 2 Actions worth of efficiency (place + attack)   3. Possibly reduce the Wound benefit from Summoning   4. Reduce the Actions of the Summoned model because she is now engaging it.

In theory, this seems to be a pretty decent trade where its not a hard counter, but a significant reduction in the benefit of Summoning. The problem as I see it is that it utterly fails as an Ability because the Range of Summoning Actions is enormous, the Restrictions almost non-existent, and there isn't any way for Taelor to predict where the Summon is going to be Placed, because its entirely the choice of the Summoner in the very moment of Summoning. The best Taelor can hope to do with the Ability in its current iteration is dissuade a model from being summoned near something important, but that doesn't actually reduce the efficiency of the summon since its free to place 6.1 inches away, and just Charge past her. 

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13 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

So in essence, the enemy Summoner has likely spent 1. an Action  2. A high card from their hand  3. A Stone.

There are many summons that do not require high cards, and you can't assume stone use.  

 

16 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

Taelor, in response, spends  1. a card of any value from her hand to  2. GAIN 2 Actions worth of efficiency (place + attack)   3. Possibly reduce the Wound benefit from Summoning   4. Reduce the Actions of the Summoned model because she is now engaging it.

It's false to assume that the place is an increase in efficiency.  You very well may not want Taelor to be where she has to go.  For instance, suppose a summoner had an ability "after you summon a model, discard a card to place an enemy within :ToS-Aura:6 into base contact with the summoned model."  We would probably count that as being quite powerful!

And whether or not being engaged by Taelor is negative efficiency, efficiency neutral, or even potentially positive efficiency is so situational as to also not be something we can simply assume.

The only unquestionable consequences are the discarded card being negative and the wound potential being positive.

20 minutes ago, Mycellanious said:

The problem as I see it is that it utterly fails as an Ability because the Range of Summoning Actions is enormous, the Restrictions almost non-existent, and there isn't any way for Taelor to predict where the Summon is going to be Placed, because its entirely the choice of the Summoner in the very moment of Summoning.

It's not an utter fail if it doesn't get an attack, if it forces the summons to go someplace suboptimal.  In fact, there are going to be instances where you gain something for nothing because your opponent has to place the model in such a way where the summoned model has to use actions to move "up."

That being said, I don't disagree that the ability's range makes it harder to use.  Since many summons are also 6", I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to make WtM something like 8".

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39 minutes ago, touchdown said:

I agree WtM could use something, you do have to take into account a 6" place. That could be worth 2 AP on it's own.

It could be, or it could be somewhere you don't want to go at all, and therefore be negative efficiency.  

Now, if you got to be the one in control of where the summoned model was placed, then you placed yourself, it'd be efficiency positive.  But as it is, I think it has to be counted as efficiency neutral since there are times it'll be advantageous, times it won't matter much, and times where it will be disadvantageous.  

EDIT:  I should also add that the place's efficiency probably diminishes as your opponent's skill increases.  The better the opponent, the more likely they can find locations you don't want to go. 

So as a result, against better players, WtM's place is likely to trend neutral/disadvantageous, or it'll be such a bad spot that Taelor just won't use WtM.

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22 minutes ago, LeperColony said:

There are many summons that do not require high cards, and you can't assume stone use.  

 

It's false to assume that the place is an increase in efficiency.  You very well may not want Taelor to be where she has to go.  For instance, suppose a summoner had an ability "after you summon a model, discard a card to place an enemy within :ToS-Aura:6 into base contact with the summoned model."  We would probably count that as being quite powerful!

And whether or not being engaged by Taelor is negative efficiency, efficiency neutral, or even potentially positive efficiency is so situational as to also not be something we can simply assume.

The only unquestionable consequences are the discarded card being negative and the wound potential being positive.

It's not an utter fail if it doesn't get an attack, if it forces the summons to go someplace suboptimal.  In fact, there are going to be instances where you gain something for nothing because your opponent has to place the model in such a way where the summoned model has to use actions to move "up."

That being said, I don't disagree that the ability's range makes it harder to use.  Since many summons are also 6", I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to make WtM something like 8".

There are many summons that dont require high cards, however ALL summoners decide what they are going to summon based off of what cards they have in hand. This is because ALL summoners have to declare what they are going to summon before they flip a card. So at the start of a Turn a summoner has to look at his hand and based on that allocate a card to make sure his summon goes off. And sure, its entirely possible that you just happen to draw the 13 Crows you need for your Jorogumo so you don't need to spend a Stone, but the odds of that happening are few are far between. Summoners almost always run high SS Caches because they need to guarantee a Suit for their summon. I don't think anyone who plays a Summoner is going to come to the table and just try to yolo both guessing the right card number and flipping the correct suit; and if they do I wouldn't expect them to successfully summon very often. It is entirely reasonable to assume that a Summoner is going to expend a "valuable card," whether a 7 or a 13, and a Stone to guarantee a successful summon, barring some additional tech like Intuition. 

 

Sure, we can agree that Malifaux is a complicated game. Whether or not the Place from WtM is a benefit or detriment varies from game to game, pool to pool, Action to Action. If I can't definitively claim the movement as a benefit, then no one can definitively claim it as a detriment. That said, I don't find your example convincing because I do not believe it accurate portrays the situation.  The ability "after you summon a model, discard a card to place an enemy within 6 into base contact with the summoned model," would be quite powerful! However, the reason this is powerful is because the OPPONENT has control over whether or not the model Places, and the specific details of its placement. It's a powerful ability because the opponent uses it when it is beneficial to him, and not beneficial to you. As far as WtM is concerned, TAELOR gets to choose whether or not she Places. Sure, she only gets to attack if she chooses to Place, but if moving Taelor is a detriment, then you simply dont spend the card. You would only use WtM and its Place if it was either clearly beneficial, or you had a strong belief that it would benefit you. In that case, the Place from WtM is ALWAYS beneficial. 

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3 hours ago, Mycellanious said:

There are many summons that dont require high cards, however ALL summoners decide what they are going to summon based off of what cards they have in hand.

So first, there are summons that don't require cards (McMourning, Benny, Reva, Ashes and Dust, etc), summons that are opportunistic and so may or may not have involved pre-planning (on kill summons, for instance), summons that don't require suits or the suits are built in/personally generatable (Nexus, English Ivan, The Sow, etc).

Now, I realize you're mostly thinking in the mold of main-line high TN+suit summoners like Dreamer, and that's fair.  But there are many more summoning paradigms out there, and there's a spectrum of resource dependence.  Whereas Taelor's WtM is always a card cost.

So citing the summoner's cost as "1. an Action  2. A high card from their hand  3. A Stone." is too simplistic of a model for discussing efficiency vis-a-vis Taelor and summoners.

3 hours ago, Mycellanious said:

Whether or not the Place from WtM is a benefit or detriment varies from game to game, pool to pool, Action to Action. If I can't definitively claim the movement as a benefit, then no one can definitively claim it as a detriment.

That's my point.  You listed it as an unambiguous efficiency bonus, whereas I did not list it as a negative.  And as we've seen, it's not an unambiguous benefit.  From a developmental standpoint, it should probably be regarded as efficiency-neutral, because there are so many variables that the final result is difficult, if not impossible, to model.

However, the variables themselves are significant.  The fact is, neither player has total control over where she ends up, but your opponent has more influence over Taelor's location than her controller.  As a result, the better your opponent, the more likely they can find a location that is at least neutral, if not deleterious.  

3 hours ago, Mycellanious said:

You would only use WtM and its Place if it was either clearly beneficial, or you had a strong belief that it would benefit you. In that case, the Place from WtM is ALWAYS beneficial. 

This is an incorrect assertion as it refers to the place, because the place is not the entirety of WtM.  One may conclude that the attack's benefits equalize a negative place.  The place would then remain negative, even if overall WtM were neutral or even positive.

This is the fundamental difference in our analysis.  I'm saying WtM is always a resource drain that offers the exchange of a card for an attack and, taken together with the other consequences of the ability, could be but isn't necessarily efficiency positive (or even neutral).

You asserted that WtM is an efficiency gain because a single card is giving you an attack, movement, and engagement.  But neither the movement nor the engagement can be assumed to be positive.  And further, you asserted that it's a relative efficiency gain because your opponent has spent more to summon than you did to respond, and as we've seen, that's also not supported by a wider look.

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2 hours ago, LeperColony said:

I'm saying WtM is always a resource drain that offers the exchange of a card for an attack and, taken together with the other consequences of the ability, could be but isn't necessarily efficiency positive (or even neutral).

I think you're right. As it stands, WtM is a worse version of Flurry. It's a card in exchange for an attack, but it's one that your opponent gets a lot of control over and may not even be applicable to many match ups. 

 

Any suggestions for changes? 

Here's my goofy idea:

Replace WtM with: Toast the New Guy: Whenever a model is summoned this model may have it and this model gain Poison +1.

And then give Taelor a built in Drunken Strength trigger. 

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25 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

I think you're right. As it stands, WtM is a worse version of Flurry. It's a card in exchange for an attack, but it's one that your opponent gets a lot of control over and may not even be applicable to many match ups. 

I think the answer is to remove the card cost for using it, and instead make it Once per Turn or Once per Activation, whichever makes more sense (probably OpT).  

Then, I also feel giving her a trigger like Maim or Drain Magic would help add to her as a resource gap closer.

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Student of conflict is supposed to be an expert fighter yet in rules she has ml4 and min1. Frankly the fast thing should be a bonus because she never can keep up with the crew.

As for tealor i think welcome to malifaux should work on places and unburying and the card discard should be removed. I bet she would see far more table time but unfortunatly not in mercenary. For me she lacks hard to wound- with htw, htk she would be give mercenary some staying power. As Viks are paper thin that would fix some holes in keyword.

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The fact is that being paper could be a feature if it were part of something bigger. 

 

Like "they are paper BUT..."

But nothing. 

They are not killy or mobile enough to be a high-risk-high-reward crew. They're a bunch of individuals that moves quite well and hit reasonably, but don't hit enough hard to erase dangerous enemy models and aren't mobile enough to avoid them. That 2" Push "Special Keyword ability" Is laughable. Sorry. 

 

I hate the crew they have become xDD

I loved them in M2E and now find the crew REALLY boring. Not exactly bad, because they can run, but very boring. 

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1 hour ago, Zebo said:

The fact is that being paper could be a feature if it were part of something bigger. 

 

Like "they are paper BUT..."

But nothing.

Yeah, if they were all Min 3 and everyone ignored either armor or shielded, that would be a that great glass cannon concept.... but they're all glass, no cannon.  Not even good glass that will cut you either; all safety glass.

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Another thing that I'm seeing missed about WtM and why it's not very good, is it isn't good vs. normal summons that summon more than one model (looking at you Sandeep), since not only do you have to yeet a card, but you only get to attack one of the god knows how many things that just appeared on the board.

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Ultimately, WTM just seems like a vastly inferior Gravity Well.

Gravity Well stops the summon being placed in an area, full stop. WTM just gives the opponent a choice/tax - you can summon in that area if you want to, but I might discard to do a thing. The fact that it has a worse effect and a higher cost just leaves it as vastly inferior to the Gravity Well option.

So it seems like an ability that could be removed entirely, since the faction already has a gravity well option.

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Yeah, that's exactly how I see the effect. That's why a few pages back I was suggesting that it work on all Places or all out of activation movement or something, to give it a bit more utility. It's ok for some models to have a single rule that's an inferior version of a rule that exists on another model, but Taelor isn't winning many other comparisons against Arik either.

 

Alternatively, maybe if they gave Taelor a built-in Exorcism trigger on her attack, so that the impact of getting hit by the attack was more significant? It's still effectively just attempting to duplicate the general gameplay strategy of Gravity Well though, and it still works on a vastly smaller number of targets and has the dubious honour of being an anti-summoning ability that doesn't even work on 30% of the game's "standard" summoning Masters since both Tara and Dreamer summon Buried.

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