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What is currently needed in faction that the starter box could bring to us? Do you think it will be keyword models with versatile like the enslaved spirit and gwisen? I’ve been hearing that ressers are weak with generic card draw and marker removal, could we be seeing that in the pipeline? Personally I want some redchapel models and revenant models, need moar burning 🔥. For a burning keyword there really isn’t that much burning to hand out that isn’t involved with a pyre. 

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Ooooo boy, so much potential, I hope that we get something awesome! I used to say we didn't need any new tech for our starter box, since Ressers were strong enough. However, with the release of Malifaux Burns, I feel that a boost could be justified.

Some thoughts:

Corpse Theme

It's a starter box for the undead faction. It should be corpse themed.

Something to combat damage reduction

I think one of our biggest weaknesses as a faction is damage reduction (armor +2 for example can be a real mission). So a bit more to deal with that... Some ideas:

  • The ability for models in an aura to remove nearby corpse markers to make damage irreducible.
  • Having models that have the job of making the dead presentable might have the precise rule.
  • Ping damage? Perhaps coupled with anti-healing tech?
  • 2/4/6 damage track and the puncture trigger (which we can pair with focus).

Card draw

Eh.... I am really not a fan of the idea of every faction getting card draw versatiles (as those versatiles are going to appear in every crew...)

Card QUALITY could make sense. Something like "whenever a model within aura cheats fate with a moderate card, it may remove a nearby corpse marker to increase the value of that card by 3 and have it count as a severe."

Or some other interaction where we can mitigate the need for card draw. We could also use a mechanic like Yannic has, where instead of discarding as a cost, we get to do something else... But that seems boring xD

Dealing with swarms

I often feel that ressers could use more AOE, which I admit is a bit of a cop out. We could probably just use more things that produce value on killing (summoning, snagging a card out of the discard pile, etc).

One big issue is the zombify trigger is living only, so may need something other than that xD But at least the zombify trigger is thematic, so maybe that's the right answer.

Keyword boosting

Mcmourning1, Forgotten, Revenant (burning) all seem like candidates for some keyword boosting...

Anything that plays well with discarding cards could work well for Forgotten, but if you gave them something like Yannic's aura that could be too strong. An aura that when you discard a card you can get a corpse, and then some mechanic to abuse those corpses (perhaps combined with the cheating moderates gets +3 if you remove a corpse), etc...

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41 minutes ago, Metalhed said:

Are the ressers expecting a starter box? 
 

Isn't that what the TOS starter effectively provides? 

I don't know exactly what wyrd want from a starter box, but I don't think the TOS starter box does quite the same as the faction starter boxes, and I'm not sure I'd want to suggest it as a starting purchase in the way I might for the 3 we have got, although partially because they have all the bits and Bob's you might need. 

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Oh, Marker Removal!

For the longest time, I was of the opinion that not every faction should have marker removal. You can bypass most markers, and the impassable ones are destructible. So didn't really see a point in marker removal.

With Hoffman 2 that changes up a bit, so if he remains in his current form I think every faction should have access to marker removal. We should probably have something like turn markers into corpses?

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So looking at the keywords that are lagging a little behind the top three contenders are:

Redchapel: 10

Forgotten: 11

Revenant: 11

Transmortis and Tormented also both have 11 but I feel like a cross faction keyword isn't likely and Transmortis is not in need of some love. 

As for the function of the box Ressers are sorely lacking for shockwave attacks(currently 5 models) so maybe turning corpses into shockwaves? Seamus in the early stories had a fondness for bombs.

Also could lean more into toying with the discard piles. Rummaging around for the good things already used or recycling bad things into your opponents deck.

just my humble 2 cents 

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On 1/6/2022 at 9:10 AM, Adran said:

I don't know exactly what wyrd want from a starter box, but I don't think the TOS starter box does quite the same as the faction starter boxes, and I'm not sure I'd want to suggest it as a starting purchase in the way I might for the 3 we have got, although partially because they have all the bits and Bob's you might need. 

Yeah, I had the same thought that the TOS box would count as the starter, but a friend pointed out why it probably won't be.

First, they're Masters. Meaning that you can't use them for Henchman Hardcore, and there's a clear imbalance, especially against another one.

43SS for Kirai (51 if Ikiryo paid), 54SS for Sonnia, vs 25SS for Bayou, Outcast and Explorer's.

Also, given neither the Gunner or Mage are keywords, or have much thematically to do with Sonnia, it makes that weak. Kirai side not so much.

Also, again, Sonnia doesn't have her totem, so it'd be incomplete. Hard to claim a Faction box is a Starter, if the first choice to expand is reduced to a single option.

The Kirai side would be fine, but the Sonnia side comes up short.

There's the other issue of the lack of a crossover model, but that's not resolved with Starter boxes either, so who knows.

Waldo really painted Wyrd into a corner. Gonna assume it was his fault.

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16 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

There's a chance Ressers were net-losers. While all of our keywords got a boost, we may not have gotten as much of a boost as other factions. It is early days. This would probably be a good thing - Ressers were top of the pack previously, so a bit of a loss in power compared to GG1 is probably fine.

Everyone has different opinions on what is OP for ressers now:

  • The Russian meta says it is Reva 2 and Seamus 2.
  • I know a lot of people are saying McMourning 2 and Kirai 2.
  • I feel like Molly 1 actually got a pretty decent power spike because of enslaved spirits.
    • So we have to ask what other crews may have gotten a new lease on life because of gwisin & spirits...

My current suspicion is that McMourning and Kirai are the overwhelming ones that people will figure out how to beat eventually, while Seamus and Reva end up being sleeper hits as people learn to play them better.

Long story short - it is hard to say so soon after release! Unlike Explorer's (which released only 8 masters at once, so breaking them happened pretty quickly), it may take a long time for the new 54 masters to settle into a coherent meta.

Any experience with Seamus 2? I've been thinking about picking up redchapel.

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32 minutes ago, Arlos896 said:

Any experience with Seamus 2? I've been thinking about picking up redchapel.

Both with and against. He crushes me when I play against him xD

Both me and my friend use a core of Sybelle + Dead Rider + Yin I think. He throws in a sloth to round it out, and possibly one other model I can't remember.

The summons are super solid. Seamus' death bubble is a huge threat, and with laugh off and stealth he can actually survive a lot (although once he starts taking hits he'll die pretty quick). Luckily enemies in the bubble tend to end up really distracted.

I think the big weakness is scheming outside the bubble (which rider and yin help mitigate).

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I’d like to touch back to a point Maniacal_cackle made earlier in this post. We should have more touching our discard in faction. We are the reuse faction, so our card draw should be more what’s already been spent, rather than new things. Our target numbers in faction are all pretty high, and the suits we need are mostly always the same two, so it would benefit us greatly to reuse ♻️ our spent cards to get more actions off. I think the original maths of the faction was, we don’t need to cheat defensively, so therefore we should have higher target number things and don’t draw as many cards. The problem with this is you  have to too many things competing for 7s to get them all off without dipping into 9s 10s and 11s, with little to no relief in a majority of keywords. We are already the “summon faction” and have a stone tax on our models which sometimes works out if the summon is good enough, but that’s another card from our hand, or stone or both. But it also takes ap (usually) to get a marker required for the summon as well. We also have a high number of discards in faction, yet another pressure on our hand. I’m finding the sure fire way an opponent can absolutely cripple me, is to attack my hand, which is typically easy to do faction wide lower stats. There’s just not enough give and soooooo much take when it comes to my hand, there really isn’t a turn beyond the first where I have a left over card to even cycle for a better card. I actually had to hire based on all of this, and found when not taking high TN things, my hand economy does better, but it sucks watching high card draw crews always get everything off. Urami had this addressed with the ghostly presence ability, but we can’t add that ability to every master. 
 

TLDR: we need more 7s in the deck, and we need more of the same suit, because as a faction we are suit locked(crows and masks). We go though our hand quite fast and have many discards. 
 

Possible solution: draw from discard effects added via errata or new models into faction via starter box, or just more card draw.
 

Closing thoughts: While I love the titles we got in the malifaux burns update, our overall power level in relationship to the state of the game fell. We continue to do the same thing, heavy melee, with heavy moment, single target and heal the damage we do take. We don’t have the options others do of variety. Things are able to counter our entire faction, because we do a lot of the same things. 

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30 minutes ago, 50 SS Enforcer said:

I’d like to touch back to a point Maniacal_cackle made earlier in this post. We should have more touching our discard in faction. We are the reuse faction, so our card draw should be more what’s already been spent, rather than new things. Our target numbers in faction are all pretty high, and the suits we need are mostly always the same two, so it would benefit us greatly to reuse ♻️ our spent cards to get more actions off. I think the original maths of the faction was, we don’t need to cheat defensively, so therefore we should have higher target number things and don’t draw as many cards. The problem with this is you  have to too many things competing for 7s to get them all off without dipping into 9s 10s and 11s, with little to no relief in a majority of keywords. We are already the “summon faction” and have a stone tax on our models which sometimes works out if the summon is good enough, but that’s another card from our hand, or stone or both. But it also takes ap (usually) to get a marker required for the summon as well. We also have a high number of discards in faction, yet another pressure on our hand. I’m finding the sure fire way an opponent can absolutely cripple me, is to attack my hand, which is typically easy to do faction wide lower stats. There’s just not enough give and soooooo much take when it comes to my hand, there really isn’t a turn beyond the first where I have a left over card to even cycle for a better card. I actually had to hire based on all of this, and found when not taking high TN things, my hand economy does better, but it sucks watching high card draw crews always get everything off. Urami had this addressed with the ghostly presence ability, but we can’t add that ability to every master. 
 

TLDR: we need more 7s in the deck, and we need more of the same suit, because as a faction we are suit locked(crows and masks). We go though our hand quite fast and have many discards. 
 

Possible solution: draw from discard effects added via errata or new models into faction via starter box, or just more card draw.
 

Closing thoughts: While I love the titles we got in the malifaux burns update, our overall power level in relationship to the state of the game fell. We continue to do the same thing, heavy melee, with heavy moment, single target and heal the damage we do take. We don’t have the options others do of variety. Things are able to counter our entire faction, because we do a lot of the same things. 

Could always have something like 'make use of every piece' - no TN bonus action, remove target corpse marker to snag 2 non-joker cards from your discard pile with a value of 7 or less.

OR something like 'every time a corpse is removed within aura, snag one non-joker card from your discard pile with a value of 6 or less.

Non-joker is important so we can't feed the black joker to the Hanged xD

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I don’t think it should be tied to corpse markers, or should just be a new type of tools for the job, start of activation type of deal.  My current thought is as follows:


Reach into the earth: At the start of this models activation, it may draw non-joker cards within the last 5 cards to up to a combined value of 20 or less.  
 

You can either draw two 7s and a 6 for 3 cards, or a 13 and a 7 for 2 cards. It constantly changes what you can draw because it only goes back 5 cards. 

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4 minutes ago, 50 SS Enforcer said:

I don’t think it should be tied to corpse markers, or should just be a new type of tools for the job, start of activation type of deal.  My current thought is as follows:


Reach into the earth: At the start of this models activation, it may draw non-joker cards within the last 5 cards to up to a combined value of 20 or less.  
 

You can either draw two 7s and a 6 for 3 cards, or a 13 and a 7 for 2 cards. It constantly changes what you can draw because it only goes back 5 cards. 

The general idea is interesting, but 20 is wayyyyyyy to high. That'd make it the best card draw in the game by far, I think.

I'd set it to something like 12, and even then it'd be very strong. But interesting for sure!

Definitely going down the right path, though - I love the idea of salvaging cards from the discard pile as our version of card draw. Although it is an exceedingly powerful form of card draw, so would have to be careful.

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Knowing what your going to get is hard to balance, 15 might be the sweet spot, who knows. This would be on the playtesters to determine. I feel like 15 would be great on a 9-10 stone single model, and 12 would be great on a 6 cost minion you can take 2 of. I just really enjoy making things and solving problems.  Either way we know what the problem is: high target numbers and massive discards. How wyrd deals with the solution is irrelevant, I just hope it’s fun! 

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5 hours ago, 50 SS Enforcer said:

Knowing what your going to get is hard to balance, 15 might be the sweet spot, who knows. This would be on the playtesters to determine. I feel like 15 would be great on a 9-10 stone single model, and 12 would be great on a 6 cost minion you can take 2 of. I just really enjoy making things and solving problems.  Either way we know what the problem is: high target numbers and massive discards. How wyrd deals with the solution is irrelevant, I just hope it’s fun! 

Could always do like EVS's Reconfigure, and have it tied to a specific suit (and that suit can vary depending on need).

Something like...
Pull From The Earth (:crow) This model may draw one non-Joker :crowcard from it's discard pile.

This could be done as a front of card ability (adding "At the start of this model's Activation"), a Tactical, or a Bonus, depending on what works best. If necessary, you could also limit the value, either to a fixed amount (of value no greater than 7), a combined value (any number, not totalling more than 15), or have it tied to the model (of a value no greater than this model's cost).

By limiting it to a specific suit, you limit the ability to go ham. Crows are obviously going to be the go-to, but a Ram for Canine Remains or Dead Dandy, or a Mask for Little Gassers (especially if they're not limited to value) could see those models having a bit more utility, as some examples.

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18 minutes ago, Morgan Vening said:

Could always do like EVS's Reconfigure, and have it tied to a specific suit (and that suit can vary depending on need).

Something like...
Pull From The Earth (:crow) This model may draw one non-Joker :crowcard from it's discard pile.

This could be done as a front of card ability (adding "At the start of this model's Activation"), a Tactical, or a Bonus, depending on what works best. If necessary, you could also limit the value, either to a fixed amount (of value no greater than 7), a combined value (any number, not totalling more than 15), or have it tied to the model (of a value no greater than this model's cost).

By limiting it to a specific suit, you limit the ability to go ham. Crows are obviously going to be the go-to, but a Ram for Canine Remains or Dead Dandy, or a Mask for Little Gassers (especially if they're not limited to value) could see those models having a bit more utility, as some examples.

If doing something like this, you would want to ensure it was flips (not drawn cards).

You wouldn't want a model just grabbing a 13 of crows for Seamus to use xD

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9 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

If doing something like this, you would want to ensure it was flips (not drawn cards).

You wouldn't want a model just grabbing a 13 of crows for Seamus to use xD

Oh, I'm sure there'd be safeguards to prevent truly obnoxious issues like that.

But even then, it'd require those cards being in the discard pile first, to be fetched, then that model activating before Seamus. Might not be enough hoops to be a problem, but it's not without some hoops.

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Just now, Morgan Vening said:

Oh, I'm sure there'd be safeguards to prevent truly obnoxious issues like that.

But even then, it'd require those cards being in the discard pile first, to be fetched, then that model activating before Seamus. Might not be enough hoops to be a problem, but it's not without some hoops.

Given that Tools for the Job is enough to feed great cards to important models (where the card must be on top of the discard pile) I can assure you order of activations is not enough. 

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How about instead of pulling out cards from the discard, you discard cards from your fate deck and choose one from those you discard. So discard 4 from fate deck and draw one non joker discarded this way. This way it limits the shenanigans of tools for the job and the selection of the entire discard. 

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11 minutes ago, Arlos896 said:

How about instead of pulling out cards from the discard, you discard cards from your fate deck and choose one from those you discard. So discard 4 from fate deck and draw one non joker discarded this way. This way it limits the shenanigans of tools for the job and the selection of the entire discard. 

Could work, but that is a LOT better than just drawing a card (which is already very powerful), unless you're limiting it to a suit or something (but then that has its own problems).

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15 hours ago, 50 SS Enforcer said:

TLDR: we need more 7s in the deck, and we need more of the same suit, because as a faction we are suit locked(crows and masks). We go though our hand quite fast and have many discards. 
 

Possible solution: draw from discard effects added via errata or new models into faction via starter box, or just more card draw.

I don't agree with this view (Although there are certainly plenty of others that would agree with it). To me, Malifaux is a resource management game. I don't expect to be able to do every action every turn, I expect to have to chose to prioritise every turn, and decide which actions and effects are the ones that matter most to me at this exact point, and do my best to make sure they go off. 

Lets take Friekorps, a non-resser keyword that is filled with strong discard effects and lots of target numbers (most models have 1 or more TN actions and every model could discard at least 2 cards in its turn if it wanted to ). When I play them I don't expect to be able to discard for each effect they could do. I don't expect every TN action to happen.  I believe they were designed with the expectation that they wouldn't be able to do all those things. Because of this they can be designed to have slightly more bang for their discard buck, because you know that you won't be able to do it every turn. On average my hand is probably going to only support 2 or 3 discard effects each turn before those discards are going to be coming from cards I want to cheat with. Each turn I will probably choose a different 2 or 3 effects that I am likely to want to do that turn.

(Forgotten, the crew with a whole mechanic about discarding cards can't discard as many cards as a Friekorps crew can, and has more in keyword card draw)

15 hours ago, 50 SS Enforcer said:

I actually had to hire based on all of this, and found when not taking high TN things, my hand economy does better, but it sucks watching high card draw crews always get everything off.

I see hiring as an important part of the game, and feel that hiring certain things because they don't have high TNs, and you already have high TNs in the crew is very much part of the player choice. Its not always the case, but if you have a plan for 2 severe, 2 moderate and 2 weak cards every turn then you probably have an "efficient" crew. Lots of crews don't get to use those 2 weak cards every turn, which is why 1 or 2 discard effects in a crew is normally not a problem,  

Whilst giving good card draw to every faction is a possibility, it doesn't always result in good balance. If I could hire Zoraida into a Friekorps crew then her ability to draw a new hand would provide a huge power boost to that crew, even more so than it does to any of the Neverborn or Bayou crews. 

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