Winning the Center in GG1 is Overrated

[Azahul]

3 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

which Lucius does not

A Ride With Me serves much the same purpose though. And a Draw Out Secrets trigger on a Lawyer can bump enemy models out of engagement before the action if an Investigator is nearby.

[ooshawn]

true, but it would be nice to not always have to revert to the most OP models in faction like serena and hooded rider 

[ooshawn]

I can't help myself, I am doomed to always ask for a answer inside of my completely in theme crew

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 minute ago, ooshawn said:

true, but it would be nice to not always have to revert to the most OP models in faction like serena and hooded rider 

Rougarou roar, rider, any obey model, wrath for bring it, any of the shove aside models or knock aside models, etc.

While I agree that leap is pretty brutally above the rest, there are a lot of second-best options that work surprisingly well.

In fact one reason Reva's crew is considered good is because it has knock aside triggers to replace the other options.

[Azahul]

1 minute ago, ooshawn said:

I can't help myself, I am doomed to always ask for a answer inside of my completely in theme crew

Investigator + Draw Out Secrets trigger then?

[Alcathous]

Just now, ooshawn said:

true, but it would be nice to not always have to revert to the most OP models in faction like serena and hooded rider 

I have yet to take either in my Luci crews.

Fly With Me on Nephilim could do similar things.

I use Lawyer obeys on Candy to get her into the opponent's deployment T1.

Pushes from "Stand Back! It's Evidence" can get you a lot of extra distance, or as stated earlier, a free disengagement. 
 

2 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

I can't help myself, I am doomed to always ask for a answer inside of my completely in theme crew

No worries. In your defense, Lucius is going to struggle the most out of all of Neverborn in trying to avoid center. He totally wants to hold center and make it hard for the opponent to go there. Because of that, he's not the best case study.

[Alcathous]

39 minutes ago, Azahul said:

I made the decision after round one of Feb to stop taking Claim Jump and boy it's actually been a weight off. And that's coming from the perspective of someone who dropped Hamelin every round (i.e. a bubbly, centre-focussed crew with a great Claim Jump target in Nix). So yeah, that certainly speaks to my experience.

With a crew like Hamelin, do you think you want control the center but not necessarily score there? Assuming you do stand center, what are your best scoring vectors that don't rely on winning that central conflict?

[Azahul]

55 minutes ago, Alcathous said:

With a crew like Hamelin, do you think you want control the center but not necessarily score there? Assuming you do stand center, what are your best scoring vectors that don't rely on winning that central conflict?

I think with Hamelin the decision I came to wasn't so much that I didn't want to fight for the centre, he's very good at winning centre fights, but more that an opponent will usually fight a delaying action in the centre and make it hard to monopolise the centre for scoring until late game and thus I wanted no more than one central scheme in most games. Hamelin crews are swimming in AP, so you can afford to have models in several points on the board. Something more scheme-oriented can be accomplished by Benny or a Rat King while the rest of the crew fights for the centre. 

[Alcathous]

5 minutes ago, Azahul said:

Hamelin crews are swimming in AP, so you can afford to have models in several points on the board. Something more scheme-oriented can be accomplished by Benny or a Rat King while the rest of the crew fights for the centre.

It sounds like Hamelin gets the best of both worlds. He can contend the center and force (trick?) the enemy into fighting for the middle, but at the same time he's not losing by a blowout if he loses that fight.

[Cats Laughing]

2 hours ago, ooshawn said:

I just learned that if you disengage , you can't interact. I can't fathom why they made it like this because it puts the value of anything with leap or a disengage through the roof

 

It does make Leap quite powerful, but FWIW, there's a lot more than Leap that will allow you to interact during an activation that you started engaged.

Walk out of melee if Agile

Charge out of melee with Diving Charge

use Don't Mind Me and just interact while engaged

use any number of attacks/triggers/abilities that move you or the opponent engaging you out of engagement.  Into Thorns is one such trigger, but there are many many more.

use other attacks/triggers/abilities that allow you to drop a scheme marker while engaged

kill the thing engaging you

 

Making the disengage action disallow the interact action was a way in which Wyrd tried to make melee combat and tying models up in it important for scheming purposes (and not just killing purposes).  Can you imagine how easy many schemes/strategies would be if every model could just walk out of melee then interact?

[Azahul]

31 minutes ago, Alcathous said:

It sounds like Hamelin gets the best of both worlds. He can contend the center and force (trick?) the enemy into fighting for the middle, but at the same time he's not losing by a blowout if he loses that fight.

Yeah, there's a bit of that. Outside of one horrificially one-sided game against Kharnage's Nekima though, I don't think I've ever even seen Hamelin lose the central brawl (and that was more a brawl in his deployment zone...). But it takes a few turns for him to really get rolling, so I have seen him take too long and lose his window to score, since he inherently gets stronger over time.

[ooshawn]

if lucius is meant to control the middle of the board, let me ask you all this.... who exactly does he outlast/outdamage/outcontrol/outscheme from the middle? 

[Maniacal_cackle]

12 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

if lucius is meant to control the middle of the board, let me ask you all this.... who exactly does he outlast/outdamage/outcontrol/outscheme from the middle? 

If it helps, I never thought of Lucius as a middle-control master before now. He can just as easily set up a gunline tearing up the middle.

He benefits enormously from someone just handing the centre to him, but I wouldn't see him as an ideal pick for claiming it? So I imagine he may end up claiming the centre in those pools where it isn't contested.

He'll outscheme tons of people, though, I imagine. He has so much board presence.

[Azahul]

Yeah, I wouldn't really call Lucius a centre control Master either. In Guild he definitely plays primarily as a gunline with myriad ways to influence the centrefield without contesting it directly. Less certain about Neverborn though. 

[Alcathous]

I could just be wrong about him wanting to control center. He does want a little bit of bubbling to happen though. But it can be fairly disparate.

2 hours ago, ooshawn said:

if lucius is meant to control the middle of the board, let me ask you all this.... who exactly does he outlast/outdamage/outcontrol/outscheme from the middle?

If he's controlling the center it's because of Alan. I don't know if it holds up against the alpha crews (probably not). But assuming not an alpha crew, Boring Convo + Diversion is a problem that needs to be dealt with and shielded + stones can keep him up. Lawyers for slow. Candy for stun and more discard. It doesn't take long for OP to run out of cards and their action econ will be real bad. I've pulled it off vs Jedza.

2 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

He can just as easily set up a gunline tearing up the middle.

Yep. Maybe he hangs back or takes a flank then deletes models on center with Agent + Angel Eyes.

2 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

He'll outscheme tons of people, though, I imagine. He has so much board presence.

He can afford to give up some positional advantage because it's fairly easy for him to reclaim it late game, especially if what he needs to do is drop scheme markers.

[Adran]

12 hours ago, ooshawn said:

I can't help myself, I am doomed to always ask for a answer inside of my completely in theme crew

Lets see then, ways to either drop markers or move out of engagement (ignoring getting free actions from obey or issue command) to allow you to interact

Under pressure trigger, Entourage, Stand back its evidence, Draw out secrets trigger, I've got your back, False claim, Don't mind me, Lure.

Thats quite a few in keyword. 

Leap isn't the answer. (well ok, leap is the answer, and an awesome answer to this question in general, but its not the only answer, and if you don't have access to leap, you do have access to other tools. )

EDIT- As pointed out Entourage only allows unengaged models to move so its not a great answer here, but it does allow you to move through an engagement range (although at only 2" movement its probably not many cases its going to get you past one)

[extremor]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

Lets see then, ways to either drop markers or move out of engagement (ignoring getting free actions from obey or issue command) to allow you to interact

Under pressure trigger, Entourage, Stand back its evidence, Draw out secrets trigger, I've got your back, False claim, Don't mind me, Lure.

Thats quite a few in keyword. 

Leap isn't the answer. (well ok, leap is the answer, and an awesome answer to this question in general, but its not the only answer, and if you don't have access to leap, you do have access to other tools. )

 

sorry to object: Entourage allows unengaged models to walk... so no, thats not an answer. BUT: yes Lucius has several other options. 

 

I consider Lucius a scalpel master, that has lots of ways to be played. controlling the center is only one of them. tbh i think he doesn't really want to play that game... his keyword is way too squishy and he profits a lot from the mentioned "winning the center hysteria"...  he can easily excerpt single models via lure/obey into his own deathzone or simply shoot em dead at range. I prefere to stay 6" away from the enemy at the center (subterfuge, missinformation, betrayal, boring conversation) and then again he can drop schememarkers at range... so why bother getting stomped at the center? 

 

btt: to me it helped a lot to adapt to the "stop maling bad encounters" from tfw. I love matches with great opportunities and a wide range to score. even though I always think about "how to react to my ennemy claiming the center". Maining Marcus and Lucius for several month I rarely lack answers to that. If these answers succeed... well thats another story... 😌

[ooshawn]

i get that, the whole issue is making it all the way across the board to drop scheme markers. who is gonna stand in there deployment zone and let you get off your ranged drop scheme markers into base ability. all those things work situationally, but leap is far and away 1000 times more reliable and doesn't require another model to pull it off. I honestly don't think there needs to be any models in the game with the leap suit built in. It's too strong for scheming 

[ooshawn]

in theory if you are even on models, you don't even have to kill my changling, you just have to have movement 5 to force it to disengage and then it can't scheme for the rest of the game, you can just follow it around and stand behind it like some creepy uncle. 

[ooshawn]

after dwelling on this for the better part of 12 hours, I don't know if there is anything anyone can say to make me think leap is balanced. The whole game of malifaux boils down to interacting and moving. full stop. that is malifaux. looking at a necropunk that's 1 more pt than  a changling , has 50% faster movement, essentially 3 ap. Way harder to kill. And height one basically means invisibility. In my mind the difference between height one and stealth is minimal at best. There's just no way it's fair that over 4 turns that model has 20 more inches of movement than my changling and can interact twice in my deployment zone.

[Alcathous]

4 hours ago, extremor said:

I consider Lucius a scalpel master, that has lots of ways to be played. controlling the center is only one of them. tbh i think he doesn't really want to play that game... his keyword is way too squishy and he profits a lot from the mentioned "winning the center hysteria"...  he can easily excerpt single models via lure/obey into his own deathzone or simply shoot em dead at range. I prefere to stay 6" away from the enemy at the center (subterfuge, missinformation, betrayal, boring conversation) and then again he can drop schememarkers at range... so why bother getting stomped at the center? 

Aight, y'all have convinced me that Luci is a lot better at the off-center game than I gave him credit for. Nice.

[Adran]

9 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

in theory if you are even on models, you don't even have to kill my changling, you just have to have movement 5 to force it to disengage and then it can't scheme for the rest of the game, you can just follow it around and stand behind it like some creepy uncle. 

This sounds true, but the nature of the game being alternating activations means that it doesn't always play out that way. You might be able to activate the changling twice before the tailing model has got to catch up with it. (And even without that what model is cheap enough that its best use it nullifying a changling?)

1 minute ago, ooshawn said:

after dwelling on this for the better part of 12 hours, I don't know if there is anything anyone can say to make me think leap is balanced. The whole game of malifaux boils down to interacting and moving. full stop. that is malifaux. looking at a necropunk that's 1 more pt than  a changling , has 50% faster movement, essentially 3 ap. Way harder to kill. And height one basically means invisibility. In my mind the difference between height one and stealth is minimal at best. There's just no way it's fair that over 4 turns that model has 20 more inches of movement than my changling and can interact twice in my deployment zone.

Leap is really strong. I'm not going to disagree. That doesn't mean that it isn't balanceable. You can look at models like Silurids that can leap, but that's about all they do. Yes, they can drop plenty of markers (up to 8 in a game) or get places, but that is all they are doing.  

Necropunks are much better than changlings at interacting in the enemy deployment zone. But that's what you hire Necropunks for. Its not why I would hire changlings. I hire changlings in a Lucius crew to gain an extra issue command, which Necropunks can't do. 

And Ht 1 is rarely more hidden than Ht 2, unless you cover your table in lots of Ht 1 terrain. 

[ooshawn]

2 of the five schemes require interacting in the enemy deployment zone, it just seems like there should be a somewhat equal option for movement that doesn't require a masters AP. In second edition it made a ton of sense because he would walk and give out a walk action, so an efficient 2 for 1. It made a ton of sense. Now that it's one for one, you really can't bring these cheaper models and expect to out efficiency someone , especially with pass tokens. So you have this situation where you have a ridiculous amount of dead models that can't compete with anything that's self sufficient like necropunks, silurids, and molly's little guys. There are just schemers that are so far and away better than things like, guild guard, changlings, terror tots, corrupted hounds when in theory they should be somewhat equal in there ability to move and interact, because that's the standard. Then you have other blessed crews that just magically get 50% or better movement on their minions. If anything it just makes the game stagnant. Nobody is gonna play with subpar models unfortunetly, it's just a unspoken rule in gaming.  There's just no way it's fair.  Leap just invalidates any other minion without it

[Cats Laughing]

Different keywords have different options, Changelings and Necropunks can't be in the same crew (ever, iirc) so can't really be compared. Also it is possible that changelings are underpowered (their kit is very different from standard models so hard to truly compare), which is fine as long as the keyword overall isn't too underpowered/overpowered compared to others. 

 

Leap is powerful, and possibly too strong on some models (why it was nerfed on Archie, iirc), but less so on other models. Some models need a high-ish card, some need the suit, some need both high-ish card and suit. Some just need a low card and no suit.

[ooshawn]

Another thing why is leap 6 inches+ base size on necro punks?? That's better than 50% , that's probably approaching 60-70% more movement. Obviously that's the case but, you can compare them. We should Both have options to be better at certain things in a scheme pool. If you look at a lucius crew and then compare it to molly or von stook, there is literally NOTHING he does better than those two crews. You can't out activate them, you can't out efficiency them, you can't out move them, you can't out fight them, they are literally better in every way. You can't possibly have played that matchup with in keyword models and tell me with a straight face it's a remotely even match up.