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Initial thoughts on third edition malifaux


ooshawn

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This is sort of like a open dialog of my scattered third edition Malifaux thoughts as they have come to me over the past week. spoiler ( I like the game)

I haven't thought this out very hard, so it's not going to be very organized or presented in any particular order. Just what comes to me as I type. Firstly, a very small amount of models have made me say "wow, that model can do that!" at the start of third edition as opposed to the start of second edition. Second edition was a slight power down, but I feel like it still had some high highs, and it didn't hurt that I played neverborn. I knew we had a price to pay for  having the most unique and powerful crews in second edition.......Third looks more balanced on paper, but balance is never showy or exciting to me. It just feels like a  power down/redistribution and simplification. Quite Frankly Removing three+ models from the game every turn as pandora was never long for this world. It was fun while it lasted (for me, nobody else).

The good, most factions got similar levels of complexity as the neverborn , controlly masters etc. There seem to be less just straight up, stat checky, brain dead crews like the perditas and lady j's of old. Every crew can do interesting things. It's a hell of a time to get into the game. The models look so much better and are packaged/bundled so much better than they have ever been. Truly malifaux is a great game. Everything has been streamlined and Nothing took more than half a second to understand how it worked. The cards on the models that count aren't bare and bland, everything has a nice amount of detail and complexity to it. The game is far from being Warmachine. The three upgrades seem so optional that I am almost to where I wouldn't even care if they just removed upgrades if we are gonna get generic ones on this power level. (listed twice)

The bad.....there are some questionable things I have seen. Pass tokens, these seem absolutely unbalanced as a guy that competatively plays games all his life, played malifaux at tournaments etc.  Like wha???? you can add these to your initiative and also for all intents and purposes negate the strongest advantage of cheap models? This just seems completely out of line with what I think jives well as a game in it's entirety. Stunned. It seems like it absolutely can neuter a model in a very few situations and in most others seems just bad. like one of the worst conditions in the game, by a large margin. Cheap models, there are a lot of cheap models that I think are just bad. I personally would've doubled the cost of the entire malifaux system to allow for more precise calculation of the value of models. I think where this hurts the worst is cheaper models. Some just feel very lackluster, and the lower point value models can feel overcrowded. Seems like something that could have been solved with the crew points going up to around 100. The three upgrades seem so optional that I am almost to where I wouldn't even care if they just removed upgrades if we are gonna get generic ones on this power level. (listed twice). that's about it.

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Interesting thoughts!

Stunned is sometimes the most powerful condition around, but it is disappointing it can't stop triggers while it is being applied. Still, shutting down triggers is massively powerful, and a lot of crews really have to work around it. Any model with defensive triggers, and stunned is the absolute last condition I want on them (except the bury defensive trigger - design flaw IMO).

Pass tokens... I think it is incredibly well balanced, much more so than it would be to not have them. Activation control wins games, and if you could bypass it just by hiring a few mindless zombies to sit on the back line doing nothing, that seems pretty unbalanced to me. It does have an unfortunate effect on cheap models, but I would say probably at least half of them are playable to good.

Also interesting to hear you don't have the "this crew can do what??" 

As a player who started this edition, that is my response to most crews. Almost every crew feels really broken in a unique way, which is great.

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It's really a lie to be honest. I looked at everything and then saw mei feng/fang? I don't even remember what she did, but I know it made me scratch my head. I can see opportunities where stunned is like I said, just crippling, absolutely just winning you the game. The thing is it's also got a lot of times where I know I would be crying inside asking ... why can't I just give you slow to stop you from scoring that scheme/strategy point.  I think for me the way they negate cheaper models just makes for more dead models which is a meta thing, but adding to your initiative is the part that I think really, really puts cheaper models in the trash can. It's like, I have six models, and you have 11, haha i'm playing the viks , "say goodbye to your enforcers ,tee-hee" lol

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13 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

It's really a lie to be honest. I looked at everything and then saw mei feng/fang? I don't even remember what she did, but I know it made me scratch my head.

Yeah, there are a lot of crews you really need to figure out a hidden weakness, because they're bonkers at first.

13 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

I can see opportunities where stunned is like I said, just crippling, absolutely just winning you the game. The thing is it's also got a lot of times where I know I would be crying inside asking ... why can't I just give you slow to stop you from scoring that scheme/strategy point.

Well, you can't just give them slow as that'd be a bit ridiculous 😜 imagine if a whole crew could slow you with their bonus actions. Already Woe can give slow using Pandora, Candy, and Kade. So that is quite a bit of slow to work with.

M3E does make you prioritise, though. You can't do everything (if you want to get that slow off, another model may get to do something else).

13 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

 I think for me the way they negate cheaper models just makes for more dead models which is a meta thing, but adding to your initiative is the part that I think really, really puts cheaper models in the trash can. It's like, I have six models, and you have 11, haha i'm playing the viks , "say goodbye to your enforcers ,tee-hee" lol

Yeah, I kinda agree, the initiative discrepancy is a bit OTT. In fact I made a whole thread about it.

That said, as others said in that thread, it is important to help balance out summoners. Also, some crews just adapt to not winning initiative.

My Reva crew always loses initiative, but good luck killing my strong models at the start of the turn (grave golem demise, bete noire buries, dead rider and Reva position safely, etc).

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I like they they do have access to slow, and I wish there was a upgrade where I could lean hard into that, as Activation control as you said wins games. Even if I could pay to have  a built in crow on pandy , it'd be worth it, to just have the possibility of handing out three slows

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3 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

I like they they do have access to slow, and I wish there was a upgrade where I could lean hard into that, as Activation control as you said wins games. Even if I could pay to have  a built in crow on pandy , it'd be worth it, to just have the possibility of handing out three slows

You know you can use a soulstone to give Pandora a crow, right? So you can pay for her to have the crow built in for a particular attack.

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4 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

As you said, if viks ain't killing your Riva crew, pandora sure as hell isn't killing your riva crew. so it's like okay I take away your triggers and bonus actions, you eventually wipe my models off the table. your gonna win that war of attrition

Well, neither Viks nor Pandora are really aggressive crews. They're more oriented towards killing anything that comes near/zone control.

Aggression is better suited to alpha-strikers (like Titania) or mobile beaters (like Misaki and Archie).

As for stone management, yes, that is a tricky aspect to the game. But if you want to build your Pandora crew to execute, you can drain your opponents resources really badly. In my experience, Pandora drains opponents so well with all those duels that they're running on empty the whole game. She is much better suited to attrition than the Viks.

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Yeah and some stuff has changed so much. Like viks were hands down the most scary melee in the game, alpha strikers. Titania was just I don't even know what she did, I never played her. She seemed so bad in second edition and dreamer,pandora, lynch were some of the top masters in the game, and I played all 3.  Pandora is definitely zone control, but she used to have reliable concrete ways to affect the game. What i'm saying now is that, you can almost just ignore her and kill her crew. If pandora is handing out slow to 3 models a turn on a 15 point model for your master at the cost of a high card and a Soulstone, that just seems like a weird trade. Like can you imagine going from being able to just turn off 3 models a turn to spending 3 stones and 3 high cards to slow 3 models , with the vastly increased amount of condition removal in the game too. She seems just like last edition, but downgraded to honestly I can't even really understand what she is supposed to do that you can't do with any other master better. Just ignore her and get your schemes.  I can't even imagine playing vs a crew that could ignore terrifying.

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For Pandora look her up in the forums, but a good starting point is using her pulse and  shockwave. You might cause 5+ duels and drain a bunch of cards (not to mention dish out a lot of damage).

Condition removal isn't too big a deal - it means you just get to apply the condition again and get another misery effect.

Despairs influence is another good ability on her (and she can use it on herself to give herself built in crows if she wants). But try putting a rams on Kade and seeing how fast your enemies melt.

Sounds like you need some time with the crew. I really struggled with it my first five games or so; it is a tricky crew this edition!

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4 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

I agree, and I do feel like that should be a bonus action. masters AP for 3 inch push and 2 casts with crows built in. That sounds so unexciting

Well, you could try doing walk, give Kade rams so he slaughters on his turn, shockwave + pulse to do tons of damage/drain cards. Especially if the Poltergeist is giving some minus flips.

That is a much more exciting turn.

M3E is very synergy oriented IMO.

4 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

however , could doppleganger copy that , move pandora and give her crows?

Yeah, and so can Changelings, so they may be a better option.

But in general giving her crows is an emergency button to stop scoring. Giving out suits to Candy or Kade or Carver is usually better.

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