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Declaring Masters: How to choose?


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What goes through your head when you're looking at a Strat/Scheme pool and deciding your Master? 

I current play Schtook and Reva - but I don't really have a clear idea of when Reva might be a better choice than Schtook. Then, to add to that, I'd like to choose a 3rd Master that might fill in a blind spot - but I find it hard to distill what makes logical sense in choosing one Master over another. 

Any thoughts, processes, or tips welcome! 

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It's one of the trickiest parts of Malifaux! For beginner's, I recommend picking based on the overall pool and which master you think can do well in it. But I'll give the advanced answer to give an idea of everything.

When declaring a master, you should consider for each master:

  • Your ideal list
  • Opposing faction
  • Deployment type
  • Strategy and schemes

Your ideal list

The first thing you want to have an idea of is your ideal list if you declare a master.

For instance, on most corrupted leyline pools, with Reva I know I would use grave golem, bone pile, and bete noire. With Molly I'd want to use Philip and the Nanny and Crooligans.

Opposing faction

Next you want to consider what faction you're up against. If I'm against Outcasts, I know they might declare Tara into certain pools. Tara can punish Bone piles and Bete Noire, so maybe I don't declare Reva. Explorer's Anti-Demise makes it harder to play grave golem, so that's a consideration for taking Reva as well for my usual lists.

If I'm against a faction with lots of ruthless models that can hit Philp and the Nanny (like Ten Thunders), then Molly might be a bad one to declare for Leylines.

Deployment type

Next to consider is deployment type. Jack Daw might look good for a pool, but if you're on corner deployment he may suddenly look like a bad option.

I quite like Molly, but on the next round of the World Series it is Wedge Recover Evidence, so I at least have to consider if I should take a stronger Wedge master.

Strategy and Schemes

This is the most obvious one. Don't pick a crew that can't score points!

My Reva crew is bad at Recover Evidence (because I favour self-bury models). My Seamus Crew is quite scheme-y, so I like to consider him for those pools.

Also have an idea of what schemes you can do in a pool. Ideally you want a good shot at least 3 of them, but 4 is better. Sometimes you can even have a good shot at all 5 schemes, and then your opponent has no idea what you're doing.

For example, my style of Reva is really good at Research Mission (pyre markers and corpses), Catch and Release (Bone Piles), Vendetta (Bete Noire), etc. So if I see a pool with those schemes, I'm more likely to pick Reva.

You also have to consider how the schemes and strategy interact. Spread Them Out is a great way to score points on Recover Evidence if you want to avoid the fight, but it becomes extremely difficult for some crews to do on top of Symbols of Authority because of the sheer number of interacts. Von Schtook on the other hand can do Spread Them Out just by killing things, so that's a consideration - assuming your opponent's models are predicted to spread out.

 

Hope this helps! That's an overview of things to consider :)

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@Maniacal_cackle comment is detailed and helpful, I'm agree with him. But i wanna give you advice that helps me a lot. It might sound a little bit weird, but works for me, so I always recommend it to all beginners:

Get a Master you like and play it at least 10-15 games no matter the pool. Play all Strat's, pick as many different Schemes as you can. Don't change until you hit at least 10 games even though you think that he don't perform well in certain Scheme pools. Than pick another Master and do it again. 

I mean i don't know your game experience, but i would say, if you have played around 15 games with Reva in different Scheme pools you would definitely knew where you want to get her and where not. If after that you would play 15 games with Von Schtook - you would see where he performs better than Reva. When you have around 30 games in your background you will 100% know what exactly you wanna try next by yourself.

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 As someone who has begin Malifaux a yea ago, I have a different takes on this (note that the advice of playing for 10 to 15 games in keywords with a master is probably the right one if you have the time for this).

Here how I proceed: 

1) Read all you can on your faction.

2) Master all versatile in faction and most common OOK pick and know when to bring them or not.

3) Unerstand general playstyle in faction.

4) try a master in keyword (1 or 2 games) to see if it match the expected playstyle.

5) Try the same Master in each strat bringing versatile/OOK that are going to compensate for that master weakness.

IMO this is way quicker than playing 10 to 15 games (you're playing 5 to 7 per master here).  Mastering the OOK/Versatile will alway give you game (even though some master are still suboptimal choices in specific scenario). Than by understanding the general playstyle of a Master you can make a choice. Maybe you won't nailed it each time but it's fine you will continue to learn. 

This method jumpstart you to be decently proficient with a couple of masters. I found it way more enjoyable (but this is personal taste). 

EXAMPLE

I never played outcast (for real). I would look at the master list and select 3 to 4 with different playstyle.

Let say 

Daw : bubble mobility and resource denial control crew. Low tempo.

Zip :  good mobility, board control. High tempo.

Parker : Low mobility, midrange shooty crew. Mid-tempo.

Viks : High mobility, aggro-melee crew. High tempo.

(Note that I can be wrong with the playstyle of some of those masters, or a master can have multiple playstyle... I will learn this later).

I'll choose the easiest crew (probably Parker here) to learne the versatiles and what they can bring.

Than I will quickly switch to other masters in my list, alway bringing my versatiles of choice if I think they're needed in a specific scenario or against a specific master.  

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1 hour ago, thatlatinspeakingguy said:

what do you mean by "tempo"? just curious.

The tempo in game play is usually the pace of the game (see chez, magic). Forcing your opponent to walk is usually a loss of Tempo for him and using Mechanical Rider to reactivate a model can lead to big gain of tempo.

Accordingly some crew want to play a low tempo game (you could say slow the pace of the game or make the game inefficient... Pandora is a low tempo master). Othe crew will want to play a high tempo game (maybe trading resources to gain tempo advantage - the accomplice ability will do that). Ulix usually want to play a high tempo game. 

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Im not really sure that it works this way in Malifaux. I mean it definitely works, but for a person, not for a master (or crew). Pandora would like to force in the middle of enemy crew turn one. Jack Daw want to engage as soon as possible, give Tormented upgrade turn one and win initiative with a high card turn two. And you want Fast source for Montresor for sure. In the meantime Ulix feels fine turtling near deployment. I'm not saying that it should be 100% of time that way, but that's what i usually saw and it looks like you saw completely opposite ways of playing those masters :) So it's really personal :)  

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10 hours ago, Sagrit said:

Im not really sure that it works this way in Malifaux. I mean it definitely works, but for a person, not for a master (or crew). Pandora would like to force in the middle of enemy crew turn one. Jack Daw want to engage as soon as possible, give Tormented upgrade turn one and win initiative with a high card turn two. And you want Fast source for Montresor for sure. In the meantime Ulix feels fine turtling near deployment. I'm not saying that it should be 100% of time that way, but that's what i usually saw and it looks like you saw completely opposite ways of playing those masters :) So it's really personal :)  

I don't see a Pandora double walking in the middle of your oponent crew as a high tempo play. It's quite aggressive but in my eyes it's actually low tempo (by doing that you're trying to destroy your oponent action economy by trading some efficiency yourself)... But I agree that tempo is not super clear cut as assessing the pace of a Faux game can be quite hard...

Maybe there's other factor that can be more useful to assess master and help people choose (aggressive vs defensive; squishy vs tanky crew, ability to kill or to scheme, etc.)

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