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11-22-09 Garden City MI, Pandemonium's Inaugural Malifaux Tournament


DasWeave

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Wow! It’s amazing to see 26 players at any event around here. Good to catch up with some folks and meet new ones. Fun event, overall. Thanks to my opponents: John, Gordy, Bowen (actually, NO THANKS for TANKING my strength of schedule by BAILING! :P ) and Magno.

I went 4-0, tying with Godspeed for 1st and losing that to strength of schedule (SOS). Congrats Godspeed. You do deserve it. You’ll certainly find a much better place for it than I would have (rezzies ain’t my thing, so I would have likely re-ebayed it for the cash, which I could use).

For my 2nd place, I got a Sonia box. Not too shabby! (but I'd trade for an Ortega's....I think...)

My list was all the models I own: Justice box + executioner.

Also a big thanks to Matt and Pandemonium for putting on the show. I want to make it clear that I have NO complaints about the venue, organizer, opponents etc. What follows isn’t a rant or sour grapes, but I’m sure it won’t be a popular suggestion either.

I went to this event mainly to see how this game and system handle a traditional tournament format. Before hand I didn’t feel it was a great way to go, and the event only reinforced my feelings. In all fairness, I had this discussion with several of my opponents and other players over the course of the day, while I was handily winning, so I don’t think it’s a skewed perspective post-SOS hoeing (sorry, but I do really dislike SOS and losing on it. It’s bumped me from prizes quite often in several different game systems).

The Bad News: I don’t think Malifaux is made for a regular tournie format. It just doesn’t feel right. The constraints it places on time, lists, strategies and schemes, as well as terrain, make it a very different environment. Example: We played 80 min rounds. This was not including table assigning, deploy, strategies/schemes etc. even so many people did not reach turn 6 and had to end games early.

Two, having just one list and one scheme means you are stuck with a list whether it’s a great or bad matchup for you scenario or opponent that round. And you are capped on max possible VPs with a very win/lose bent to play. Schemes won’t win you the game when you have just one and s strategy that pimps your one list.

Three, some masters are really good at one strategy, but not others. Like the Marcus players today. They excelled at Treasure Hunt, but not necessarily Stake a Claim. This can lead to people creating model tiers for play, if they play one scenario a lot.

Four, competitive play can bring out the worst in people. It seems simple (to me) to stack a deck. And I don’t know how to spot someone stacking—I’ve never had to learn how to do that. And like loaded dice, it’s not hard to load a deck by dropping a few low cards for a few high. Again, not easy to spot. But people will do that. Further, they will number-crunch the game to oblivion to create tiers of power and play a lot of Slaughter games with Hold Out as their scheme cause it’s so easy to score VPs that way. Then you end up with a bunch of players who are uber-competitive and live and breathe the game, and players who quit or don’t bother showing cause the same three people takes 1st 2nd and 3rd.

Don’t think it can happen? I invite you to scope out our local WM/H scene. Play in a few tournies and you’ll quickly learn who those three players are.

Nothing against them, but the atmosphere has become a one-upsmanship of broken list building and comboing—fun for those few hardcore players but not for many others. The end result is now a much smaller player base than a couple years ago. Having been a PG for 3-4 years now, I’ve watched our group grow into what it is. Indeed, I had a big hand it in. At one point you could play 4-5 days a week and play in a tournie EVERY WEEKEND! Every Weekend!

It was fun while it lasted, but players started tuning more and more, reading more forums, and building and playing more “uber lists” they found there to place better (or just to stay in the arms race). I don’t think that’s Malifaux bag, and I’d hate to see it go that way. It’s a fundamentally different game. Frankly, WM went after a tournie-style kill or be killed style game. It’s better suited to that. So leave it to them.

The Good News: Malifaux is LOADED with flavor, style and character. IMO it has made it a point to BE different.

-It uses cards instead of dice

-It’s a very small-scale skirmish game with no units (currently)

-Tons of character models.

-Lots of abilities and few/no single wound grunts (like units) to make each model a complex piece to use and learn, with many possibilities

-Layered scenario play with strategies and multiple scheme options.

-VPs scored for accomplishing goals and holding objectives rather than killing models. Some of which can hidden or shared to add to the dynamics of that game.

-Terrain-style based special events with real in-game effects.

-A turn limit in which to do that stuff.

This rich foundation is currently attempting to be shoe-horned into the ill-fitting shoe of a swiss-style tournament. The detriments to play are readily apparent. The detriments to the player base are soon to follow.

If competitive 1-1 play becomes “the norm”, expect ALL the above to go away and resign to playing a pre-made list in a Slaughter strategy game with Hold Out and similar schemes in effect ALL THE TIME. If you think it won’t happen, look at the scenarios in Prime and then think about when did you last play a game that wasn’t straight caster-kill. Or a WFB game that had a scenario at all. Or a 40K game where it mattered.

So, that’s all well and good, but what to do?

Here’s my rough idea

Make a multi-player event that takes X hours. Like a Tour of Duty style event, or a themed event (one PG here ran an Orgoth Shrine event where he built a shrine that filled the table, stuffed it with 3K of cryx, and had 4-8 players siege it to try and win by getting into the shrine and up to the top level).

So what if the table was a town square that the Guild players had to hold by holding key areas and building. The other factions are invading and trying to take X or Y or do B or C. You score points based a pre-posted strategies and schemes that your factions achieves as you play the event. The sign-in has caps for each faction so that players will be spread more evenly across factions and fill out each side of the battle. Overflow could be handled by having side strategies that could be played at a small pt scale on 1-1 table, the results of which could affect the main table. Or do two themed tables where say table one is a guild raid on a rezzie hold out and table two is a neverborn strike on an arcanist outpost.

Prizes for a big team event like this could be a unique deck. Eg; the neverborn team wins the big massive multiplayer huge table full of awesome themed terrain and special objectives event. All the neverborn players that played get a 2010 Gen Con fate deck – a unique prize that will never be duplicated.

Another idea for multiple day events is a weekend league, which will take the time limits off games but allow a cap on games played per day. Now the pressures of a tournie are removed. This would be great at Gen Con or Origins. Now you can have paced winners. And you can cap it off with a massive event like the one above, if you like.

These are Malifaux strengths, IMO. Play to your strengths and you will succeed. Dare to be different (as you have already). By trying to cover weaknesses or do the conventional, even if it doesn’t suit you, you hurt your position. Competative play isn’t just a straight tournie event. In fact, that can get pretty dull and stagnate your game. There is so much character and flavor built into encounters and models here. It’d be a shame to waste it, just to have a tournament format for the sake of having one. What makes you unique makes you strong.

Edited by paradox
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@ Paradox

THANK YOU!!!!!

This is GREAT feedback. And to anyone else who would think that harsh criticism that is also constructive like Paradox's post, will be poorly received, please understand that this is exactly what is needed.

Malifaux is different. So it likely needs a different tournament format. It will be the posts like these that help steer the game in a good direction.

Again, thanks Paradox. Great post.

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I do agree with all of 'dox's findings, however I did have a ton of fun, win or lose (no losses today, but plenty under my belt). However, the issue being the foreseeable future of powergaming, as right now all of us are still learning to an extent.

I do like the idea of a multiplayer event, quite a bit. So...maybe we can rack our brains for the first Jackson event to do this. Hit me up with more ideas dox, you have many more years in Minis than I do, especially in a competative environment.

And thanks for the congrats, sucks it came down to strength, I lost my first WM tourney to that. And for the record, I will wait for the real copy cat to release, this one I bought a display case for and he is on my shelf above my painting/PC desk :D. And enjoy Sonnia, especially Sam. HE IS A DIRTY MAN! (eff Judge ;))

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One comment I forgot to add is that Hold Out and similar schemes should get tanked. Too easy in general to get. Aside from one fluke of a flying pig, no one even came close. I rode that one all day. It doesn't add to the game and promotes a straight up slaughter style game. I'd also discourage the Slaughter strategy. Today we did double Slaughter in games 3 and 4 for both players. It lead to less interesting games than the 1st two, which had players trying to do something besides kill ASAP.

I'd encourage Malifaux folks to comb the strategies and schemes thoroughly and eliminate this kind of stuff. More objective-based would be alot better.

Finally, the corner and angle deployments seem too harsh on a 6 turn game. I'd try playing them as a 10X10 corner and a 10 diagonal. right now, as a player, I HATE the two corner deploys. They seem to make the game shrink to a four round game. Besides, terrain often seems to accumulate in corners in set up, which makes deploying extremely rough on many players. There was plenty of that today.

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Hold out was a bit bad, which is the only time I missed any VP because I rode Body Guard on Saemus all day. One round, Lyllith took him out but the hookers avenged him. As far as Slaughter go, it really depends on the speed of the players. My first Slaughter round, vs Josh from Twilight, got him down to just his master and he ran, 2 pts. Second and final round, I killed everything but Teeth but made him insignificant.

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My issue with Hold Out is that it's hard enough to get into a normal opposing zone. Even worse with corners. Further, you just need to get to about the middle with speed and catch the enemy to force a brawl mid-table. Sacrificing too many models to running flanks will get your middle squished, which will either allow them to clean up the flanks or get in your own zone, or both.

Slaughter should just go. It devolves to straight up fights. That's fine, but it shouldn't be every game. I had TONS more fun trying to haul a treasure or stake a claim (which results in a big fight, but now it really matters where you stand).

HOWEVER, neither are too terrible if you are making a list post-terrain and post strategy etc. Then you can build to it.

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Slaughter I just appreciate vs assassinate because it's less hiding, and a break from WM mentality. At least you can keep going if you both have assassinate in this game I suppose.

Treasure hunt was AWESOME. 6" Walk with Belle's and no terrain hindrance, Call Belle with Sybelle to make them appear at the DZ safe. Worked last night but tonight I had no Masks to pull off the call but I kept him at bay so the Hooker could make a break for it.

I do like playing to kill, but I am really enjoying the scenarios too. I admit, playing 1 Assassinate and 2 Slaughters was a bit much today, but the issue is under time and turn restraint, slaughter is almost impossible when he can run 1 or 2 models away from you all game with the amount of terrain it uses.

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I had three games of slaughter and one assassinate. It got pretty repetitive. In casual games I like the corner deployment, but if all I'm doing is slaughter and hold-out, it can make things uninteresting.

As far as removing slaughter as a strategy, I think it needs to be in the game. The slaughter and assassinate strategies play mainly to the "Timmy" demographic*, and keep them interested. Done too much, however, and it can get stale. Having the TO decide the strategies took a lot of the variety out of the game, as every table (and for the last two rounds every player) was doing the same thing on terrain that, while different, was set up in almost identical patterns. If we can decide random special terrain and special events for ourselves, we can figure out what our strategies are.

My main problem was the time limit, as it left the tables where both players were experienced a large advantage in being able to finish their strategies. My first two opponents had learned the game yesterday and earlier in the week. They were great guys and played well, but the matches went to time in the 3d and 4th turns.

This was the first event in a long time that I went to where everyone was friendly and acted like human beings. The event was well run, the venue was excellent, and the people were friendly. I can't ask for more than that.

*In case you don't read Magic articles, Timmy is the casual player who likes to play big monsters and attack. The concept carries over well into Malifaux, and some people are going to focus on killing your guys over their strategies anyways because "killing models is FUN". My brother is a Timmy.**

** The other two player demographics are Spike, who plays to win, and only enjoys the game if he's winning, and Johnny, who likes to discover the neat tricks that certain cards (models in our case) can do when paired together.

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I am sure I will have more thoughts to add later, but Slaughter can be a very difficult uphill battle for some crews (thus getting to change your crew between rounds makes sense). With crews like Rez that can continue to add models throughout the game, it can be incredibly difficult to pull off slaughter. It is even worse when one player gets that strategy and another gets Treasure Hunt or Assassinate (all they have to do is grab the treasure and run away or hide the master to prevent the assassination, can be done but it can be very difficult for some crews).

I do enjoy the majority of the strategies. I was one of the few Marcus players that won with Claim Jump. That was difficult and it was down to Marcus holding it alone (thank the Lord for that timed event, lol).

More thoughts later.

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i wont go too much into it because well just because but "power gaming" is different from each persons perspective. It will only take a little time until people come across "broken" list builds and what not. people think effective is broken which i don't get.

new games have a level playing field which is quite enjoyable but when someone begins to win events more than once you cannot simply state they are Power gaming or they play cut throat to win. some players like playing to win because they want people to challenge them for an intense game.

if people think the decks are being stacked you could always make it so that the opponent cuts the deck. then again IMO we shouldnt have a reason to not trust eachother.

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I had a great time at this event. Everyone was friendly and seemed to just enjoy playing the game win or lose. I do agree with 'dox that Malifaux probably needs some type of modified tournament format.

I don't think allowing players to change lists during the course of the event is going to be a good idea. It works for the game as a whole but in a competitive environment I think you need to try to limit people.

One thing I think may or may not help is figuring out the strategies before hand. And posting them with the players packet. That way you can tailer your list to the possible scenerios you might face but still get a bit of randomness. Also rather then telling the players they are 1 or 2 let them flip off to choose. That way the T.O. can keep things interesting by limiting the amount of slaughter and assainate. In reality you should only ever play each of those strategies once in a tournament otherwise we will devolve into a "play like you got a pair ... d-bag mentality" don't get me wrong love the other games but the tournament mentality of them is just not healthy. If we can maintain the fun spirit of yesterday's event I think this game will provide a lot of enjoyment for our MI gaming community.

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I know I was sure paying attention to what worked and what I might implement.

Matt was awesome. Ran a great show. He gave me great advice about what worked and what kind of changes might help.

Not intending to steal any thunder in this thread, but since a lot of the players at Pandy yesterday will likely make it to the Dec 12 event, I'm right now finalizing my scenario plans and will have them posted in that thread. I think that jmp_mydog has it right: knowing the scenarios up front might be really solid.

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'Dox, great discussion with you yesterday, great post. We should really continue this and work on something.

Metro-Detroit has the player base, the time, the terrain and the tabletop space to try anything we need.

@Nerd,

we run public scenarios for our Infinity tournaments and folks build their lists accordingly and this is an extremely successful and refreshing tourney format.

A. Folks rarely complain they get hosed by the scenario.

B. We see drastically different lists from tourney to tourney because of the changing scenarios

But Infinity works great in tournament format, the game can handle it without the shortcomings that WM has to that end.

I fully agree with 'Dox on Malifaux not suited for individual player swiss-style or even bracketed tourney format.

The amount of character, flavor, scenario-location combos opens up to many shifting imbalances that will leave a very sour taste in some folks mouths.

A lot of the imbalances in the game aren't going to be generally solved in say tour of duty events and such, but I beleive you'll mollify a lot of those problems and best off all I think this system offers a great opportunity for some cooperative based events that will prevent the game from devolving into some of the other systems based on how the system pass promoted and pushed.

No pun intented.

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I agree, everyone was friendly, very. And all very good attitudes. My final opponent seemed a bit...flustered when I pulled a couple careful lynchpins as I knew how his army was meant to play, and he less to mine. But in the end, we shook hands and discussed the game and he went on to show me some of his other minis.

Not so much flustered as tired, I stayed up way to late the night before, had a long drive, and wasn't expecting the tournament to run quite that long (no offense toward the TO, growing pains of a new game). Will admit that the final match was an uphill battle from the start with slaughter as a strategy and Seamus across the board. Hard to wound is probably one of the most daunting abilities for Gremlins to overcome.

@Paradox

Agree that the game doesn't lend itself very well to a traditional tournament format. Malifaux is more like the old CCG Jyhad: Vampire the eternal struggle then Magic or Warmachine in play.

Enjoyed the event immensely but found myself to many times playing for the "Draw" due to a rather untenable strategy for gremlins which intern screws with the SOS for my opponents (both of my wins came from announcing the "Thwart" scheme and playing opossum).

Also agree that the pre-placed terrain was a bit of a problem and a necessary evil. Problematic when facing Lilith on a board full of terrain with Treasure Hunt strategy and corners deployment, or an open village square with Claim Jump strategy and standard deployment. A necessary evil because of the additional time it would add placing terrain.

In the end I think Malifaux (like J:VTES) is better suited to casual or league play then tournaments.

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