Winged Plagues...

[admiralvorkraft]

Does anyone use them? I'm generally happy with Hamelin's keyword, but the WPs just seem...not well tuned. 

I had a game against Honeypot last night and, while I know that direct comparisons aren't always accurate, the Winged Plague and Depleted have similar enough roles in similar enough crews that I think it merits comparison. (I won the game handily btw, against a brand new player, but still this isn't a balance rant)

Depleted cost a point less, they are an order of magnitude tougher (one more wound, HtW, HtK), faster (Drawn to Brilliance), and do irresistible damage when they die. 

Winged Plagues are Significant and I don't want to discount that, but they are too slow and fragile to be functional scheme runners and too slow to be the Blight bombs that they seem to want to be.

My pitch to modify them would be to remove The Plague Spreads and give them Fly With Me at stat 6 instead. That way they can function as cheap schemers, they can function as blight bombs, and they can carry Rats which I don't think would actually be useful, but which would certainly be funny.

And of course if people are using Winged Plagues successfully I can always try just Getting Gud(tm).

[Jesy Blue]

They are perfectly suited for the Benny Bomb™ as they are both Vermin & not Insignificant; outside of that they are utterly useless... I'd rather have 2 more rats.

[Zebo]

2 hours ago, admiralvorkraft said:

give them Fly With Me

That was exactly my suggestion at some point. Even the rat-carrier joke xD. 

 

I use to hire two of them, but only to drop scheme markers near Benny helped by Unclean Influence. At third round or so they can try to run to score something or to deny some points, but really don't feel like a good option. They're too slow, weak and squishy to do anything. 

One of the worst 4ss models in the game, imho. 

[Azahul]

I considered hiring them once, but then decided I could get Scheme Markers out with a Malifaux Child and a Prospector for a Soulstone more (that the Prospector promptly gives back), especially since I so often want to be using Unclean Influence after Benny has summoned rats to get the Rat Kings on the field pronto rather than to get rats on the table in the first place.

 

I could see myself playing them if there were a way to summon them (there's a way with every other Plague Minion, it actually feels a bit incongruous), depending on how much that would cost. I could also see a bit of functionality if Festering Wounds could target friendly models. Then you could have them attack Nix repeatedly to drive up his Blight, then convert that Blight into schemes for Benny. It would also give a use for the blight Rat Kings sometimes put on friendly models with their spray of filth trigger.

[admiralvorkraft]

5 hours ago, Zebo said:

That was exactly my suggestion at some point. Even the rat-carrier joke xD. 

Great minds, I suppose 😛

@Azahul yeah, the Festering Wounds point is a good one. I'm sure I'd summon them occasionally too... As-is the only thing I can think is to hold a couple as last activation turn 1, double walk and push to get Blight out early, but it really doesn't feel like that's 8ss of value, and doing it with just one seems pointless. 

[Azahul]

I'm just not sure how they should be summoned... A trigger on Hamelin's melee attack if he kills a target with it (like Leveticus with Abominations) is probably the obvious choice, but Hamelin's actions are plenty strong as is. Give a Rat Catcher a way to Replace into a Winged Plague might work and keeps the kind of rough cycle the Plague Minions have going already. An alternative summon option on Benny perhaps, since they do come packaged in the same box. I dunno.

[Jesy Blue]

An easy way would be for every instance of summoning a Malifaux Rat, if you discard a card you summon a Winged Plague instead.

[Azahul]

17 minutes ago, Jesy Blue said:

An easy way would be for every instance of summoning a Malifaux Rat, if you discard a card you summon a Winged Plague instead.

I like the concept, but maybe a little easy? What about if the Infestation trigger changed to include "If this attack kills the target, replace them with a Winged Plague instead."? My understanding is that at present Infestation does nothing if the target dies, would be nice to plug that hole. May need different wording though so that you don't get both a Rat and a Winged Plague from the one hit though.

[touchdown]

You could give Hamelin a trigger with double to summon a Winged Plague.

[Zebo]

Well, if Hamelin could summon Stolen as in M2E, somewhere could be an option to kill a rat and then replace one Stolen with a Winged Plague, o replace both models with a WP. It should be on Hamelin, but he's already strong enough and has many things to do, so maybe in Benny or in the Stolen themselves 

[Azahul]

Yeah, that really is the trouble with the summon option. Every other model in Plague is plenty strong as it is, and Summoning is something you wouldn't ordinarily just tack on to a model, let alone one performing well already. Maybe a new release somewhere down the line, but it's hard to figure out a good spot to slip that option in now.

[SoulGambit]

I use Winged Plague in most strategy / scheme pools where them dying won't immediately advance the opponent's victory points. However, they are definately Benny's buddy and I am not sure I would take them without him. They tend to not do well in matchups where the opponent benefits from their death due to things like incidental summoning, or in matches where the opponent can realistically bust your bubble directly.

They are fragile and pillowfisted, but Hamelin makes them 3 (potentially 4) AP in a crew that chews through AP like water. Try moving them up with the bubble, dropping scheme markers for Benny, and protecting themselves with Terrain / positioning, until that moment they fling out 13" or 18" away to drop relevant scheme models or tie up a model much more expensive than themselves. If they survive turn 1, they will have dropped two markers for Benny, and if they are near Benny they threaten a third even if they die. By end of turn 2, they have either tied up the opponent's big hitter or have dropped another 1-2 markers for Benny. If they survive until turns 3-4 they are probably in scoring position and can dive any undefended part of the board.

The opponent can, of course, kill them. In fact, it is pretty likely that the opponent will kill them. Your goal is to make that take enough AP away from things that really needed that AP for something else. If the opponent kills a Winged Plague with cards and AP that could have killed Hamelin, OW, Nix, or Benny, that is a Winged Plague well spent.

[admiralvorkraft]

The way I play "the bubble" really doesn't move much. 

Nix usually dives deep to spread blight but I should try a WP or two in that role...

[SoulGambit]

Try and move your bubble slowly towards the center of the board (possibly off-center if there is a dense cluster of objectives). Benny should generally be moving and summoning turn 1 and possibly turn 2.

[Azahul]

I find I'm normally summoning with Benny Turns 1-3 guaranteed myself. Turn 4 is more 50/50, depending on scoring opportunities and how the attrition game is playing out. It's just turn 5 that is a rare occurrence for obvious reasons.

 

Mind you I'm using Prospectors instead of Winged Plagues, so there's still a lot of value to be had in barely leaving the deployment zone.

[Zebo]

Winged Plages are plain bad as they are now. 

Having players (like me) hiring them doesn't mean they are fine. As anyone who has been playing this kind of games for some time would know, there's always someone playing even the worst models. Giving them some utility wouldn't break the game.

As has been sugested before, Fly With Me would make of them an ok scheme runner. 

[SoulGambit]

That depends on how you measure value. How many scheme markers for Benny does a WP need to drop, in addition to either taking either 2 AP to kill or scheming out from your bubble, to be considered worth it? As it stands, you can expect each WP to drop about three markers for Benny (two on T1, one on T2) or four if they die in his aura. Fly With Me would change that considerably.

It allows you to, T1, drop a marker, Fly With Me, drop another marker. Then, after Benny activates, Hamelin lets them drop a third marker. T2 they can drop another 1 or 2 Markers, plus their death. On top of that, now they can Scheme or operate up to 17" away (up from 13"), not counting Moldy Cheese, or they can effectively scheme twice with the first marker being 8" away and the second 4" from that.

[admiralvorkraft]

How are they each dropping two markers turn one? Are you spending two 8s to make them fast? Or using Hamelin's zero? 

Either way doesn't seem worth it to me. 

I hire a rat and get my turn one King off Benny, Wretch, Rat Catcher each dropping one. Mostly incidental summoning is plenty for me in later turns. 

[Zebo]

20 minutes ago, admiralvorkraft said:

Are you spending two 8s to make them fast?

I spend two 10+ to make them fast. 

 

31 minutes ago, SoulGambit said:

How many scheme markers for Benny does a WP need to drop, in addition to either taking either 2 AP to kill or scheming out from your bubble, to be considered worth it?

How many ss would you pay to have 1 scheme marker near Benny and giving your opponent 1 pass token each turn? Do you think 4ss are worth it? 

[Adran]

42 minutes ago, Zebo said:

 

How many ss would you pay to have 1 scheme marker near Benny and giving your opponent 1 pass token each turn? Do you think 4ss are worth it? 

If you put it like that, then they are totally the right price. There are almost no models that cost 3 ss that can drop markers in the game, and very few cheaper ways to get 2 markers a turn dropped than hiring 2. 

I don't think that's actually a good use for them, but they are amongst the cheapest scheme dropper in faction. 

[touchdown]

I still think I'd prefer prospectors who can also get 2 markers out with some luck and end up reducing their own cost.

[admiralvorkraft]

3 hours ago, Zebo said:

I spend two 10+ to make them fast.

That... really doesn't seem worth it. *shrug* different playstyles I suppose. 

So two 10s, an 8, 9ap and Hamelin's free action get you a turn 1 rat king that gets to activate turn 2. Am I missing something? 

[Azahul]

6 hours ago, Adran said:

If you put it like that, then they are totally the right price. There are almost no models that cost 3 ss that can drop markers in the game, and very few cheaper ways to get 2 markers a turn dropped than hiring 2. 

I don't think that's actually a good use for them, but they are amongst the cheapest scheme dropper in faction. 

Of course, one of those 3SS models that can drop markers is a Versatile model in Outcasts, so they do face some competition...

[Zebo]

19 hours ago, Adran said:

If you put it like that, then they are totally the right price. There are almost no models that cost 3 ss that can drop markers in the game, and very few cheaper ways to get 2 markers a turn dropped than hiring 2. 

I don't think that's actually a good use for them, but they are amongst the cheapest scheme dropper in faction. 

Well, out of about 40+ non-totem 4ss models in the game, I've only found 2 insignificant models. And almost all of them can actually do something real apart from interacting to drop scheme markers. There's some really good models, and some less useful, bit It's difficult to find some model worst than the WP. 

So no, being non-insignificant don't mean being worth 4ss, since there's also more non-insignificant 3ss models than insignificant. 

 

EDIT: in fact, of 13 non-totem 3ss models in the game, only 4 of them are insignificant, so there's more than double non-insignificant models. If you add the totems then it would be 7 insignificant models out of 22, so more than triple, but totems are costed weirdly so I would remain on the non-totem data (still 9 vs 4)

So no, 4ss only for being non-insignificant is far from being a good deal, unless it can do something else, wich WP can't. 

[Azahul]

In that vein, what sort of function should the Winged Plague serve? Beyond the changes mentioned already, I do think Gross Explosion is fairly lacklustre as Demise abilities for this type of unit go. I can't help but feel that it should deal damage too, though in Plague that would certainly be detrimental with how hard it can be to spread out at times. I have a hard time figuring out what I actually want from them to be honest, outside of better scheme marker shenanigans just so that Benny can make more rats, but that doesn't need to be the only direction to take them in.