Upgrade experimental minions?

[ooshawn]

Me personally, I love thematic crews. I think my wish would just be giving mcmourning more of the models he already has. Take a point off gassers and hounds, and autopsies. Give gassers their tactical action as a free action. Maybe demise (2) poison 2. Give autopsies a little something. Just random ideas I had while staring into the m3e app on my phone before bed 

[Maniacal_cackle]

I'm not sure how competitive McMourning is just because so few people play him, but pre-covid there were a few strong players of him that seemed to do well.

So not sure how much Experimental needs a buff. Making the tactical action a bonus could make Gassers a bit awkward to play, since often you use them to stack 3 poison turn 1. But I do like the idea of them being relevant later in the game, and being able to move after poisoning seems good.

Hounds would likely start to be very good at 2 stones, so not sure about reducing them. Autopsies you could reduce to 4 stones and they'd still be worse than other keywords at 4 stones xD But I imagine would be taken pretty consistently just because a 4 stone durable model with creep along has pretty good value. The only issue is that with Loot Their Corpse, in some matchups they'll net generate stones, but that's probably okay.

[Harlekin]

Canines are okay in a McM crew. They fill the gap of fast-ish scheme runners and them dragging along corpses can actually do something in the crew. Together with the perv metabolism they force the opponent to dedicate resources way above their weight to get rid of them. 

Autopsies were okay if their ranged attack was 5. They are quite sturdy, generate Stones, are comparably fast, hit okay in close combat. I don't bring them often but that's mainly because GG1 heavily favors elite over horde. 

Gasers actually do lack, as they don't come with H2W they go down easily. Their only use as they are now is generating some poison for my own crew which feels a bit wrong. The demise ability @ooshawn proposed would fit and give them some more use. On the other hand the are 4 Stones and have Flight, some utility, 5 wounds, perv metabolism and a little retaliation, so I consider their price fair.

As the 'problematic' models are those for 3, 4 or 5 Stones, again, i'd say it's just the typical problem of elite always beating model count M3E is facing at the moment and thus it's not so much about the models but the game. 

As a side note: I am running a campaign with a friend of mine (Shifting Loyalities modded to M3E) and the situation is totally different there when it comes to cheap models. Maybe the designers already had something like this (small or smaller games) in mind. 

[Graf]

While Experimental surely isn't Performer or Nightmare, for that its poison stick can be countered by to many models, I feel like it is a solid crew. I'm not sure about Autopsies, they seem like a not really needed filler for the crew, but also not horrible. They would be good if they were summonable, but they aren't a high contender for spending list SS. But I like the Demise Poison AOE idea! It feels very thematic without the risk of going overboard. My impression is that Wyrd will avoid erratas when they aren't absolutly necessary, so I don't see this happening, but the thought is nice.

[Harlekin]

For the Gasers Bloated Stench already is kind of the Demis ability mentioned above, so I guess chances for them getting any errata in this way are rather low. 

[ooshawn]

it seems like everybody says the gassers are the worst offenders of the three, and then maybe autopsies and the hounds are tied.  I would love a way for someone to be able to summon gassers and autopsies. It seems like a lot of people don't care for sebastian , and even less so for rafkin. Perhaps rafkin could summon autopsies and gassers. Give the gassers a little change to make them better

[KingJocko]

I think the obvious answer for Experimental's poor showing in the tournament scene is due to the rigidity of the crew. When someone says they're playing McMourning there's a lot you can assume. You'll be dealing with the Poison condition so you'll need to bring condition removal or immunity. The keyword overall is melee oriented with average to high mobility so prepare to play around them or shoot them before they get close. The average Df of the keyword is 4.3 and Wp is 4.2 so a stat 5 or better attack has a good chance of hitting. Meanwhile Perverse Metabolism and H2W are the primary defenses so min damage 3 and condition removal are your tools for mitigating their advantages. You can also expect the crew to mostly stay within the keyword as the crew heavily relies on internal synergies to achieve its best performance. So unless McMourning is heavily going OOK you'll know what to expect and be able to prepare for it. In a tournament setting flexibility is prioritized, Experimental lacks this attribute. This doesn't make Experimental bad or not fun to play as or against, but predictability is a tactical negative and with other Resur Masters being more flexible without giving up their advantages they become better picks for tournament play.

With that said I do agree that some of the models are under performing and those tend to be the undead models. The low average of Df and Wp in the keyword is from these models since they're all sitting around 4 on everything. I think this is because Perverse Metabolism's potential healing is so high that there was an intention to counter balance it with lower defensive stats. Unfortunately the practicality of Perverse Metabolism's healing rarely out does Regeneration +1 or +2 despite requiring more work to get there. These negative stats aren't as prohibitive with the higher cost models since they're well designed around their roles, but it's the lower cost models who show poor performance from this handicap.

I find the Canine Remains to be the worst of its hound brethren (Guild Hound and Corrupted Hound), but they do have an advantage in the ease of their summoning. No summon upgrades, no Mindless, no Once per Turn, just a 6 and a corpse to get a full health, albeit Slowed, model. So as a summon their good, but outside of that context they're not very appealing as a hire. Assuming they're not permitted to break the hound mold, giving them Bloated Stench and the Infect trigger would at least let them act like little fire and forget missiles. I have problems with all the hounds and think they could use a minor rework, but as is they're only use for me right now are fragile schemers.

I'm the one guy who likes the Little Gassers. They're the only model in the keyword who's efficient at spreading Poison to all models. In a single activation it can drop Poison+3 on everything within 2" of it without a resist flip. While that's really effective it doesn't have any direct effect during it's activation, meaning getting into a precarious location to do what it does best leaves it in a precarious location for the enemy to react to it. With less defensive tech than any other model in Experimental it doesn't last long which is counter intuitive to its designed purpose, spreading a time sensitive condition. So to me the fix would be to make it more durable, jump its Df up to 6 or give it H2K.

The Guild Autopsy is my biggest offender because I can't find a purpose for it. Everything about it is middling, not bad or good, just middle of the road as far as potential. Everything else in the keyword outperforms it and Loot Their Corpse doesn't make up for it. I really liked the GA back in M2E because they were they were effective ranged damage with Poison and brought a unique action that allowed you to summon Mindless Zombies at the cost of its Poison condition. While I'm not saying they need to be reverted back to that state, I think they need a unique identity that isn't just moderate melee damage since Experimental doesn't lack that.

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 minute ago, KingJocko said:

I think the obvious answer for Experimental's poor showing in the tournament scene is due to the rigidity of the crew. When someone says they're playing McMourning there's a lot you can assume. You'll be dealing with the Poison condition so you'll need to bring condition removal or immunity. The keyword overall is melee oriented with average to high mobility so prepare to play around them or shoot them before they get close. The average Df of the keyword is 4.3 and Wp is 4.2 so a stat 5 or better attack has a good chance of hitting. Meanwhile Perverse Metabolism and H2W are the primary defenses so min damage 3 and condition removal are your tools for mitigating their advantages. You can also expect the crew to mostly stay within the keyword as the crew heavily relies on internal synergies to achieve its best performance. So unless McMourning is heavily going OOK you'll know what to expect and be able to prepare for it. In a tournament setting flexibility is prioritized, Experimental lacks this attribute. This doesn't make Experimental bad or not fun to play as or against, but predictability is a tactical negative and with other Resur Masters being more flexible without giving up their advantages they become better picks for tournament play.

I think I agree, but a part of me disagrees. I don't think poison is the only way to play the crew.

Declaring McMourning just means you have the best melee attacker in the faction as your leader (assuming single masters. In double masters you could just hire McMourning xD). McMourning + some nurses + whatever else is a pretty solid package, and doesn't have to rely on poison. You could build a whole corpse engine for the crew for example, so you can blasphemous ritual (to stack McMourning with focus to give him his sweet 4 and 5 damage hits, and to cancel out distracted) and to summon later in the game.

McMourning, two nurses, two minions with GST, one gravedigger, and whatever else for example is a pretty solid crew that isn't reliant on poison (but has a bit floating around to be a useful addition to the crew) and starts with tons of focus. Could even put the GSTs on the Nurses to be extra efficient.

Although I guess now condition removal is still great here against the focus, which is annoying xD It is frustrating that McMourning is so much better with focus, and the same tools answer both poison and focus (condition removal).

[ooshawn]

It does seem like the answer is to just make them better at what they do which is pump out poison, which I think you could do by making things cheaper and summonable.  If rafkin summoned autopsies, that would make perfect sense for them and himself. Gassers, idk who could summon them. I do like them, if they were free. The dogs are already summonable. It's just a shame it feels like they can never figure out how to just fix dead models. Every edition for three editions they have just had some models that were just paper weights. 

[KingJocko]

18 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I think I agree, but a part of me disagrees. I don't think poison is the only way to play the crew.

Declaring McMourning just means you have the best melee attacker in the faction as your leader (assuming single masters. In double masters you could just hire McMourning xD). McMourning + some nurses + whatever else is a pretty solid package, and doesn't have to rely on poison. You could build a whole corpse engine for the crew for example, so you can blasphemous ritual (to stack McMourning with focus to give him his sweet 4 and 5 damage hits, and to cancel out distracted) and to summon later in the game.

McMourning, two nurses, two minions with GST, one gravedigger, and whatever else for example is a pretty solid crew that isn't reliant on poison (but has a bit floating around to be a useful addition to the crew) and starts with tons of focus. Could even put the GSTs on the Nurses to be extra efficient.

Although I guess now condition removal is still great here against the focus, which is annoying xD It is frustrating that McMourning is so much better with focus, and the same tools answer both poison and focus (condition removal).

My point was that there's only so much wiggle room within Experimentals mechanics that it leads to easy predictability. As in your example you de-emphasized the Poison aspect, but emphasized the mobile melee aspect which is another predictable avenue for the crew. That's not to say I consider your choice a bad one, as it plays to one of McMournings strengths. You could instead play against the grain and run a McMourning gun line mouse trap crew where everyone's throwing flasks or vomiting on the enemy behind cover and once someone comes into melee the whole crew collapses on that model, but that likely wont be very effective considering the low damage output of their ranged attacks or even worse the enemy just out shoots you. So you can't venture very far outside of McMourning's comfort zone and still be effective.

Here's an example of the opposite problem. Forgotten likes to discard cards for bonus effects so the obvious solution is to attack their hand and force discards. However the crew has card draw mechanics to make up for its discard function and can even take advantage of an empty hand so there's no way to completely shut down Forgotten's mechanics, but only hinder it. In addition mixing OOK models with Forgotten wont hurt Fading and the OOK models may actually benefit from the extra card draw that's native to the keyword. This makes Forgotten a much more fluid keyword, allowing more options for how a Molly player can build a crew as opposed to a McMourning player.

17 hours ago, ooshawn said:

It does seem like the answer is to just make them better at what they do which is pump out poison, which I think you could do by making things cheaper and summonable.  If rafkin summoned autopsies, that would make perfect sense for them and himself. Gassers, idk who could summon them. I do like them, if they were free. The dogs are already summonable. It's just a shame it feels like they can never figure out how to just fix dead models. Every edition for three editions they have just had some models that were just paper weights. 

I've seen this suggestion for a lot of the sub par models and I'm not a fan of the "make things summonable if they're bad" approach. If a model is only good if its summoned it means you're getting a bad model for free and it's the lack of cost your appreciating, not what the model brings. There can be intentionally poor performing models who are summonable like the Malifaux Rat, but they're built around that aspect and benefit from it. I think a good example of a model who's summonable but I would still hire regardless is the Ashigaru. They're effective at two main aspects, durability and crowd control, and when summoned they take a hit in durability by being summoned at half health. Similarly the cost of McMourning summoning a Flesh Construct, beyond the 3 corpses required, is Distracted+1 on McMourning which is really bad. Assuming the summon was the last thing McMourning did during his activation you're left with a choice for the new Flesh Construct, do you run off and leave McMourning's melee capability hampered to do something else or do you Assist McMourning to clear Distracted, but waste an action to do so? Despite being summonable I still regularly hire FCs in Experimental because they're really good versatile models and summoning one is a bonus rather than necessary to me using them. I understand its a lot to ask of Wyrd to make each model worth hiring independent of their summonable status, but due to Malifaux's small scale every hire a crew makes has to shoulder a lot to achieve victory. So more viable options means more flexibility in how everyone can play.

[HowNot2Wargame]

Agree with the comments of McMourning being direct and there is nothing wrong with that.  He's one of my fav masters and I basically started collecting ressers so I could still play him lol.

Where there is 'next level' is when the opponents know your crew is about poison/speed/stabbing, its getting the mix of these fairly different between each turn.  The amount of times I have wrong foot opponents by turning McMourning into a schemer turn 3/4/5 has allowed me to scrap a few extra points out of nowhere.  Also vomitting people 5/6 times in a turn with 2/3 Flesh constructs can really dampen down the rest of their game.

Saying that.... he is occupying similar space to Von Stook and Yan Lo.  I've played a bit of Von Stook and the versatility is great, even if the beat down potential is not quite as much.  Haven't played Yan Lo at all, but would expect its a similar pattern.  Hence totally get @KingJocko 's point.