How commonly did you see stacks of over +2 Focus

[Math Mathonwy]

The new errata changed Focus to not stacking over +2. How often did you see over bigger stacks in games before? Were they mainly limited to a couple of Masters or did you see large stacks sometimes outside of the usual suspects? Hamelin and Shen Long were kinda notorious but who else?

In general, do you feel that this change will have a general effect or be limited to just a couple of keywords?

[Maniacal_cackle]

It varied from crew to crew, but quite a bit. Especially some players save the focus for really important stuff so don't even use it when they get a chance.

Examples:

• Reva crew pulses focus everywhere.
• Seamus crew stacks focus on Seamus
• Molly crew dodges the enemy and just sits there stacking focus for two turns sometimes.
• Crooligans stack 2 focus a turn initially, so have 4 by end of turn 2
• Just tried guild Lucius today and the whole build was based on obeying my beaters to stack focus.

So I would say that is something that will be felt quite a bit. I just realised now how strong a nerf it is for my crooligans

[Maniacal_cackle]

Of course when I first started I did crazy combos to the point of inefficiency.

Philip and two rabble risers can stack a LOT of focus. I remember Philip running around with 7 focus with ease.

[Adran]

I generally don't stack focus high enough that the errata will affect my play, but as you can see it is something that varies hugely by player. (Some crews can do it easier than others, but I think it is a player style more than a crew style). 

[Maniacal_cackle]

5 minutes ago, Adran said:

I generally don't stack focus high enough that the errata will affect my play, but as you can see it is something that varies hugely by player. (Some crews can do it easier than others, but I think it is a player style more than a crew style). 

I think crew (and enemy crew) make a big difference too.

Stacking focus is usually for when you have a 2 damage jump from weak to moderate (like 2/4/5, 1/3/4, or 3/5/6). This strikes a good balance of good damage with minimal card investment (often not even needing to cheat for the result you want).

Or if you need to bypass minus flips (like concealment). And occasionally it can replace card draw in a crew by giving positive flips (like with Reva).

But then against like Ressers with hard to wound, you're probably not wanting to spam focus and instead just want to spam attacks.

Although there is an element that a certain type of player is attracted to crews that stack focus xD

[Math Mathonwy]

I play Mah and Von Schtook so pulsing Focus is something I do a lot of but even then getting to 3+ Focus was really rare for me (talking of the time after the Mah nerf, naturally). And I'm not sure how often doing something else besides getting that third Focus would've been an obviously inferior option. But of course both of those crews tend to allow for good opportunities to project force in various ways and a more static crew might be more inclined to stacking Focus if they don't have obvious other things to do.

[Da Git]

Anything from a Tanuki (although that's no longer possible). Biggest culprit was probably FuFu and his gatling gun... 3 Focused shots from that was just ouch!

Otherwise Rat Kings with 7+ focus turn 1

Sandeep's replacement Golems could get high too.

[trikk]

Family tended to have 3-5
Rat Kings tended to have 6-7
Golems in Sandeep tended to have 7
Duet could probably go to 4
Every Bayou with 12 cups
Shenlong can transfer fast from LRM
 

[James Dyson]

On top of the ones listed in everyone elses' post:

In a crew with Bokor, any pass token could turn into a bunch of focus (say Alphonse, sammy).

Black blood Shaman + Vasilisa pulling the strings to Blasphemous Ritual 3x a turn.

You could hire 4 aboms to make a Deso Engine with focus 7 (and be Vendettaing a cheap model, so double nerfed here)

Fuhatsu, as mentioned,  could get to like 7 focus and fast.  This applied, frankly, to whatever beater of choice Shenlong wanted to buff.

Brewmaster would get some focus from Tanuki and Wesley, maybe not above 3

It seems most factions had ways to load up models with focus.  While massive focus bombs got hit early (ex: Mah), the more NPE side of things was when you could just have one or two models get super-saiyan and then rocket into your crew.  

Partially because focus meant they likely did good damage and hit more often.  Partially because a focus engine is usually durdling in your deployment zone and so is uninteractive with your opponent.  And lastly, distracted didn't do enough to stop focus when you had both on you.

The changes now mean that:

- You have less reason to sit back and spam focus; you will want to move up and engage with your opponent more.
- You'll have less likelihood of one or two super-models just deleting things by flipping half your deck.
- Distracted can now be spammed on you, meaning that focusing early is potentially a sunk cost if your opponent hits you with distracted.

[NoisyAssassin]

I was a newer player before COVID, and haven't gotten many games since, but out of my 22 games of Malifaux (all played with a pretty casual crowd) I've never seen a model with more than 2 Focus on it.

[Math Mathonwy]

I know that there are tons of ways of pumping models up with silly amounts of Focus but I was kinda more interested in whether you actually saw it happen on a regular basis.

I haven't been travelling to tournaments during M3e like I did in second edition so my experiences are mostly limited to a small circle of friends and a couple of local tournies. I haven't seen massive stacks of Focus outside of Shlong and Rat Kings (I've never seen Sandeep on a table but yeah, I've understood that Golems usually do tons of Focus) barring singular cases and I'm interested in how common it was for other people to see.

[Thatguy]

I saw 3 a lot, like usually a couple models got there a game. 4+ was pretty rare. 

Hitting 3 by turn 2 is pretty easy if you Concentrate turn 1 + any other source of focus+ focus again turn 2. 

[Kharnage]

Usually it was stacked out Rat Kings and whoever was snorting that scheme marker cocaine in Bayou. Ophelia and/or Rami with 12 cups was my most common "that's a lot of focus" foes. Nekima could hit 4 focus though if I had the tomes in hand for the Shaman triggers and I didn't have any diving to do turn 1 (so, fairly rare)

[touchdown]

in Freikorps, I would say at least 1/4 of my games I was stacking about 4 focus on Hannah and/or Arik. You'd strengthen their armor, load up, copy strengthen armor and concentrate to go *hard* turn 2.

It's not going to be a huge change for me though, I'll just spread the focus around. I think I had already started moving in that direction. Engineers strengthening their own armor so I wasn't as reliant on the big boys and girls.

[James Dyson]

I'd say I saw it in ~ 1/3 of my games, between me doing it with Hamelin or my opponent doing it with one of the other myriad ways.

Heck, last night at my local shop one of the players was using Von schill with two Engineers, and was going through the motions to make Hannah Focus 3 before I reminded him of the change.  So it's been an occurrence in my circle, at any rate.

[extremor]

The only model I usually stack focus upon is cojo... focus +4 ain’t rare to him...

[Morgan Vening]

3 hours ago, extremor said:

The only model I usually stack focus upon is cojo... focus +4 ain’t rare to him...

Dang, I forgot about those guys (Old Major and Ullr too).

The effectiveness of Mark Territory took a big hit with the cap. Wonder if it'd be too potent to make a small change?

"Remove all Scheme Markers" to "Remove any number of Scheme Markers".

That way, if Cojo was within range of four, he could remove two, beat someone up using both, and then next turn, repeat. It's still getting to maximize the transmutations, but requiring both two bonus actions, and the ability to stay in the area (alive/in position).

Or would the tailoring (removing only/mostly enemy scheme markers and not friendly ones) be too potent?

[Maniacal_cackle]

7 hours ago, Thatguy said:

I saw 3 a lot, like usually a couple models got there a game. 4+ was pretty rare. 

Hitting 3 by turn 2 is pretty easy if you Concentrate turn 1 + any other source of focus+ focus again turn 2. 

Yeah, I agree, 3 is a number I see on my own crew a lot. Outside of some special cases (crooligans), any more than that wasn't too common.

[Mycellanious]

Every game I played Mei Feng my entire Crew was Focus +3 Turn 2, due to Kang

[NoisyAssassin]

1 hour ago, Mycellanious said:

Every game I played Mei Feng my entire Crew was Focus +3 Turn 2, due to Kang

...huh. What are you doing with them T1 that all have an AP to focus, and Kang ends up in range of everyone for two whole turns? Are you not laying any rail lines or moving forward early?

[Mycellanious]

9 hours ago, NoisyAssassin said:

...huh. What are you doing with them T1 that all have an AP to focus, and Kang ends up in range of everyone for two whole turns? Are you not laying any rail lines or moving forward early?

They are. In general they simply Railwalk once and Concentrate near Kang. Forgeling tries to create 2 Scrap, as is standard giving Burning to Kang.

The next bit is situarion depending on map and matchup, but usually Kang Pulses out Focus and either walks-focuses or walks-walks. Then Mei Feng creates Scrap under Kang, and the crew (except Gamin and Forgeling) Railwalks up and concentrates around Kang.

Turn 2 you would just Activate Kang first and blamo 3 Focus

[NoisyAssassin]

Interesting. I've usually tried to spread out and advance a lot more on T1. That sounds like an interesting opening strategy with all the 2/4/X damage tracks in the crew though. Too bad I didn't consider it until it's no longer as relevent

[Mycellanious]

1 hour ago, NoisyAssassin said:

Interesting. I've usually tried to spread out and advance a lot more on T1. That sounds like an interesting opening strategy with all the 2/4/X damage tracks in the crew though. Too bad I didn't consider it until it's no longer as relevent

It's still *relevant* just capped at 2. It means you need to use some Focus before activating Kang Turn 2. If you havent tried the Foundry gunline yet definitely give that a shot! Kang + 3 Survivors is super fun!

[NoisyAssassin]

Ooooh, that does sound fun! I haven't tried more than 1 Survivor yet (who's usually my go-to for Magical Training). What does the rest of your list look like when running that setup?

[Mycellanious]

1 hour ago, NoisyAssassin said:

Ooooh, that does sound fun! I haven't tried more than 1 Survivor yet (who's usually my go-to for Magical Training). What does the rest of your list look like when running that setup?

This was a pretty common Recover Evidence list for me:

The Worker's Champion (Arcanists)
Size: 50 - Pool: 6
Leader:
  Mei Feng
Totem(s):
  Forgeling
Hires:
  Kang
  Sparks LeBlanc
  Survivor
    Magical Training
  Survivor 2
  Survivor 3
  Rail Worker
  Metal Gamin
 

Obviously you could drop the Railworker and Metal Gamin for more guns if you want, but I wanted to maximise Kang's pulse. Dropping Sparks for 2 Railworkers is also really effective.