Guild strengths and weaknesses?

[Rakthen]

I've been playing ten thunders and I now have three masters painted up for them and I've been eyeing guild as a second factions for a little bit. My LGS had lady J and the emissary so I went ahead and picked them up. What am I in for exactly? 

[Morgan Vening]

4 hours ago, Rakthen said:

I've been playing ten thunders and I now have three masters painted up for them and I've been eyeing guild as a second factions for a little bit. My LGS had lady J and the emissary so I went ahead and picked them up. What am I in for exactly? 

Lots of fun!

Winning, not so much. At least, general feel is Ten Thunders is the stronger faction.

But Lady J is definitely tons of fun.

As is the Emissary. Brutal's defensive tech is just so frustrating. Def 6 is always good. Armor 1 means nickle and diming him or devoting resources to hammering him, H2K stops a single big hit from finishing him off, and Aura of Vengeance tops him up. His Sword is great, and his Cage can potentially win games (Reposition, plus a move, and being the one that places the buried, means having a model be put 11-13" away from where it needs to be, with a 50mm base in it's way).

Just expect most things to be slow-ish, with a few exceptions.

[Antipodean]

Generally weaker on scheme running and movement from TT to Guild... which can be problematic in a game dependent on movement and scheming...

[belorey]

Yes, the biggest problem in guild are movement triks so it's dificult for them to score some strat/scheme.

Guild is also focus on counter enemies so you usually are the reactive player instread of proactive.

Last, guild has many keywords Focus on killing things but you will see they are not as efficient as other keywords with their tech piece who can kill + scheme.

[admiralvorkraft]

Guild does have keywords that can turn on the speed - Witch Hunter, Augmented, Guard, Elite, Family...

Guild's biggest weakness is a player base that starts every crew with Pale Rider, Lone Marshal, Steward, Lawyer. It's strength as a faction is in its depth of counter-tech.

[trikk]

16 minutes ago, admiralvorkraft said:

Guild does have keywords that can turn on the speed - Witch Hunter, Augmented, Guard, Elite, Family...

Guild's biggest weakness is a player base that starts every crew with Pale Rider, Lone Marshal, Steward, Lawyer. It's strength as a faction is in its depth of counter-tech.

Guild biggest weakness is lack of leaps/secret passages which means we have an issue with going through enemy models and through buildings/forests to score points that require mobility. 

 

Speed doesn't matter if you don't have the defensive tech to survive.

[theamazingmrg]

47 minutes ago, admiralvorkraft said:

Guild does have keywords that can turn on the speed - Witch Hunter, Augmented, Guard, Elite, Family...

Guild's biggest weakness is a player base that starts every crew with Pale Rider, Lone Marshal, Steward, Lawyer. It's strength as a faction is in its depth of counter-tech.

 

31 minutes ago, trikk said:

Guild biggest weakness is lack of leaps/secret passages which means we have an issue with going through enemy models and through buildings/forests to score points that require mobility. 

 

Speed doesn't matter if you don't have the defensive tech to survive.

Both are true. 

 

Guild doesn't have that many great models (but do have many good ones), so there's an over-reliance on the ones that exist from a lot of people, and the faction can be surprisingly quick.  But it does lack defensive tech, and the movement that it has is primarily pushes, with very little Unimpeded outside of Frontier, so severe terrain slows things down dramatically.

 

Couple that with generally middle-of-the-road stat lines and poor card draw, you've got a glass cannon-esque faction with decent killing power, but poor scheming and inconsistent results.  

[admiralvorkraft]

38 minutes ago, trikk said:

Guild biggest weakness is lack of leaps/secret passages which means we have an issue with going through enemy models and through buildings/forests to score points that require mobility. 

 

Speed doesn't matter if you don't have the defensive tech to survive.

You're right, I guess a weakness of the faction is that it requires you to develop good fundamentals of positioning, tempo, and resource management.

[trikk]

27 minutes ago, admiralvorkraft said:

You're right, I guess a weakness of the faction is that it requires you to develop good fundamentals of positioning, tempo, and resource management.

Can you enlighten us by some youtube videos or batreps on Vassal?

[admiralvorkraft]

2 hours ago, trikk said:

Can you enlighten us by some youtube videos or batreps on Vassal?

Not really. I have two kids and a full time blue collar job. 

I'd recommend playing some chess, and losing a lot of games of Malifaux as you focus on the game more than the models. 

[trikk]

Have you won any M3E big tournaments? Or a lot of games versus good players? Because without that I don't think it's nice to imply other people's skill level or positioning game. 

[Adran]

I would say that it being an unforgiving faction is probably fair, it's lacking several of the last minute hail Mary options that other factions can use to cover mistakes. 

It can do well and has won several M3 large events, so even though it might have a lower win rate than some factions ( I don't actually know)  it is possible to be competitive with it, but you might find it has higher skill requirements to get to that sort of level.

 

It also suffers from the perception that it's the simple faction, and a lot of players don't play it because they want to play the "interesting" factions. 

[Legislat]

I had won a fare share of tournaments. Though I never had a "That was easy!" after game thoughts as guild. But I did have those playing Zoraida or Misaki 😅

We have very little "free" value in faction. 

[admiralvorkraft]

10 hours ago, trikk said:

Have you won any M3E big tournaments? Or a lot of games versus good players? Because without that I don't think it's nice to imply other people's skill level or positioning game. 

As I mentioned, life stepped in to pull me away from the game in the first year of 3e. I will be playing in the team tournament, so you'll be able to show me up at the end of August I'm sure.

That being said, virtually all the talk around Malifaux sounds a lot like you're talking about MtG. This card does this, this combo happens in that way. There are an enormous number of hard to quantify pieces that come into play with how those models actually interact on the game board. I don't have much trouble keeping my low-mid cost minions alive until they've done what I need them to do (including against fairly meta 10T crews with Fuhatsu, Samurai, etc). Conversely I've put the Lone Marshal on the table twice, found it underwhelming against a cagey opponent, and have since left it in the case and not missed it.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Guild players on these forums tend to ignore 80% of the tools we have in faction in favor of a fixed list that is optimized for the dojo/game-on-paper whatever. Much the same thing happened in 2e with the Papa Loco/Francisco Ortega/Death Marshal nonsense. Back then I was winning tournaments in four states, I encouraged people to get creative then and took plenty of flack for it. I didn't mind it then, I don't much mind it now.

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 hour ago, admiralvorkraft said:

As I mentioned, life stepped in to pull me away from the game in the first year of 3e. I will be playing in the team tournament, so you'll be able to show me up at the end of August I'm sure.

That being said, virtually all the talk around Malifaux sounds a lot like you're talking about MtG. This card does this, this combo happens in that way. There are an enormous number of hard to quantify pieces that come into play with how those models actually interact on the game board. I don't have much trouble keeping my low-mid cost minions alive until they've done what I need them to do (including against fairly meta 10T crews with Fuhatsu, Samurai, etc). Conversely I've put the Lone Marshal on the table twice, found it underwhelming against a cagey opponent, and have since left it in the case and not missed it.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Guild players on these forums tend to ignore 80% of the tools we have in faction in favor of a fixed list that is optimized for the dojo/game-on-paper whatever. Much the same thing happened in 2e with the Papa Loco/Francisco Ortega/Death Marshal nonsense. Back then I was winning tournaments in four states, I encouraged people to get creative then and took plenty of flack for it. I didn't mind it then, I don't much mind it now.

I totally agree that people online tend to ignore a lot of tools (many consider Bete Noire pretty bad for example), but I think the flak was over the perceived implication that other Guild players don't know how to position well.

16 hours ago, admiralvorkraft said:

You're right, I guess a weakness of the faction is that it requires you to develop good fundamentals of positioning, tempo, and resource management.

 

17 hours ago, admiralvorkraft said:

Guild does have keywords that can turn on the speed - Witch Hunter, Augmented, Guard, Elite, Family...

Guild's biggest weakness is a player base that starts every crew with Pale Rider, Lone Marshal, Steward, Lawyer. It's strength as a faction is in its depth of counter-tech.

The commentary on the guild player base (which includes some incredible players in the VWS - I'm a better player just from having encountered them) probably put people's backs up.

That said, your underlying point - there is a lot of unexplored power in a lot of crews... I totally support!

If I had listened to some of the great players online, I would not have played Molly. But she carried me to tenth place in the world series so far! So definitely good to put your own take on models.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Id be keen to hear about some examples of lists that work for you. I know a Perdita player that makes great use of the 4 stone pistoleros, which is pretty unusual!

[OssumPawesome]

7 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I totally agree that people online tend to ignore a lot of tools (many consider Bete Noire pretty bad for example), but I think the flak was over the perceived implication that other Guild players don't know how to position well.

 

The commentary on the guild player base (which includes some incredible players in the VWS - I'm a better player just from having encountered them) probably put people's backs up.

That said, your underlying point - there is a lot of unexplored power in a lot of crews... I totally support!

If I had listened to some of the great players online, I would not have played Molly. But she carried me to tenth place in the world series so far! So definitely good to put your own take on models.

Yeah, that's what I like about this game. Despite the power levels and tier lists you can do well with any Master. I don't see much talk about McMorning, but there's a local player in my meta who kicks butt with him. I'd imagine for someone who loves Guild Masters, that situation would be no different.

[trikk]

1 hour ago, admiralvorkraft said:

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Guild players on these forums tend to ignore 80% of the tools we have in faction in favor of a fixed list that is optimized for the dojo/game-on-paper whatever. Much the same thing happened in 2e with the Papa Loco/Francisco Ortega/Death Marshal nonsense. Back then I was winning tournaments in four states, I encouraged people to get creative then and took plenty of flack for it. I didn't mind it then, I don't much mind it now.

Dude. I can't wait til you get into a discussion with Plaag

On a serious note: I try to experiment with different builds a lot but I don't think I'll get convinced that getting symbols in Guild is as easy as in other factions with mass places/leaps/teleports/unburies.

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 minute ago, trikk said:

Dude. I can't wait til you get into a discussion with Plaag

On a serious note: I try to experiment with different builds a lot but I don't think I'll get convinced that getting symbols in Guild is as easy as in other factions with mass places/leaps/teleports/unburies.

One thing worth noting though is Guild is potentially better at playing the reactive denial game than most.

Guild rarely scores 4 symbols, but also it is harder to score 4 against Guild?

That said, it is the worst strategy for guild, right? XD

Nothing in guild compares to a Don't Mind Me Tara and snagging symbols for example.

[4thstringer]

This forum does have a bit of a tendency to absolutism.  That's been true for a while in 3e. While I've had local success, I can't speak to the secrets of success at the level of the VWC.  Yall might absolutely be right.  But it seems to be there have been several people who have reported success at local tournament levels with crews that are far outside of the guild all star builds that have been discussed.  (Callum's Basse, Oli in the England league, Andre with Sonia, even I think militarons lj doesn't really play the all stars).

I don't think there is any one poster on here (of us guild players that is) that tends towards the level of absolutes that is being described, so much as the collective voice resulting in this forum tends to feel that way.   

[4thstringer]

16 hours ago, Legislat said:

I had won a fare share of tournaments. Though I never had a "That was easy!" after game thoughts as guild. But I did have those playing Zoraida or Misaki 😅

We have very little "free" value in faction. 

I feel this. I've taken 2 non guild breaks and both times felt like Goku taking off the weighted clothes.

[trikk]

25 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

I feel this. I've taken 2 non guild breaks and both times felt like Goku taking off the weighted clothes.

I played a shit ton of Guild. Then I went OC and won a tournament off the bat

[4thstringer]

21 minutes ago, trikk said:

I played a shit ton of Guild. Then I went OC and won a tournament off the bat

I would honestly like to see if other factions have a bunch of players who have had this experience. 

[belorey]

55 minutes ago, 4thstringer said:

I would honestly like to see if other factions have a bunch of players who have had this experience. 

I'm began playing 10T and it's funny how mobile and scheme can be. McCabe, Youko, Misaki... They have an amazing control of the table.

[admiralvorkraft]

3 hours ago, 4thstringer said:

I would honestly like to see if other factions have a bunch of players who have had this experience. 

I know a couple Outcast players have had that feeling.

And in fairness, I've switched to Outcasts but that's because I owned virtually all of the models in my keywords of interest already.

I've had lots of success with an all-keyword Family crew (Dita, Neph, Abuela, Franc, Santiago, Nino, and tech to taste). I've got a couple low model count Lucius crews that work very well - 2x Guardians, Doppel+LLC, 46+LLC for example. Augmented I don't have any particular takes on other than rating the Guardian much higher than the general meta did even before the Gage nerf (I don't play much Augmented).

Plaag and I...probably can't have a useful conversation but I'd be happy to play him at some point and see how it goes. 

And I'm sorry that I implied y'all aren't good players. I let my frustration with the conversation broadly spill over. I won't defend myself on that point, I should have been more strictly constructive in my comments.