Schemes and their VP worth.

[Prophaniti]

Recently I've been playing a few games of Malifaux and while the Strategies are rewarded fairly (except slaughter, which takes a lot of effort), some of the schemes seem to offer very good value for effort and also declaring them seems to rather low risk.

What I'm getting at here is that easy to achieve schemes are rewarded as much as the harder to achieve ones and that it's not worth keeping the schemes secret in my experience so far.

I'm a Rasputina player and at least one sabotage scheme is pretty much a shoe-in (it's secret *and* 2VP's). My most regular opponents use ressurectionists and have declared army of the dead and bodyguard every time.

Should some of the strategies and schemes have altered VP's? I think so. Just to disadvantage myself I think Sabotage could be made with a declared target for 2VP's and an undeclared one for 1. Slaughter would not be unfairly rewarded at 3&6VP's for its win requirements.

What do you all think?

[wrabbit37]

I don't like making Slaughter worth more VPs, because you don't have the option of picking it yourself. It's randomly flipped for. As such, someone who flips it has that many more VPs available to them. If you decide to hide your secondary schemes, it's your choice to reduce your total available VPs, but not so with primary missions.

That having been said, I agree that many of the secondary objectives could use adjusting.

Our group, though, pretty much always announces the secondary objectives. We've had enough times where someone lost simply because they did not announce their two missions and the other person did.

[WEiRD sKeTCH]

While Slaughter can be difficult, you hire your crew after you find out what your Strategy is.

If you aren't building your Crew to maximize for your Strategy, then you can have problems...

[Justin]

I totally agree.

Although I think slaughter should be reworked completely, or dropped completely. Same for assassinate, actually. Assassinate isn't as bad as slaughter, usually, but some match ups are just horrible with it.

[Justin]

While Slaughter can be difficult, you hire your crew after you find out what your Strategy is.

If you aren't building your Crew to maximize for your Strategy, then you can have problems...

This is true. And I can see the design intent here. But it's just not the way it really works. People will want to be able to use their favorite master in every mission. Some people only play with their minis which are painted, others don't use proxies, etc. And, unless you have access to the entire line, some of the strategies just aren't balanced.

On top of that, your opponent can also maximize their crew to your strategy. So, while you take a hearty beatstick for slaughter, they pick a crew with insane defense, or with a ton of guys who run to every corner of the board, etc.

I also posted something similar in the game sizes thread:

http://www.wyrd-games.net/forum/showpost.php?p=124026&postcount=7

[WEiRD sKeTCH]

The issue with that 'uber defense' Crew is what would their Strategy be? If they're just running away from the one attempting Slaughter, how are they going to win by running away or just going full on defense?

[Justin]

The issue with that 'uber defense' Crew is what would their Strategy be? If they're just running away from the one attempting Slaughter, how are they going to win by running away or just going full on defense?

That depends on what their strategy is.

If it's reconnoiter, they can absolutely win by just running away.

If they have claim jump they can win by taking a really defensive crew and sitting it in the middle.

If it's treasure hunt they can take just one really fast model to run around with the token.

OR they can gear their entire crew to doing their strategy, and take one really fast model to run away from the enemy the whole time. (this seems to usually be the case)

And when your opponent is going to be scoring 0 for their strategy, you can rest pretty well assured that only 2 for yours will pull out the win. Now, this is not always the case thanks to schemes (a brilliant mechanic, by the by, and very fun) but it's usually the case.

Now, of course, this is situational and depends on who you are using, but when playing with people you see every week (which is usually the case) you have a pretty good idea of what they're going to bring to the table, even if they choose their crew after flipping strategy.

Edited March 30, 2010 by Justin

[WEiRD sKeTCH]

Then perhaps we should stop speaking of Situational as Constant?

[Justin]

Then perhaps we should stop speaking of Situational as Constant?

Perhaps.

But I'm more a law of averages kind of guy.

When 8 out of 10 times I find slaughter to be unfair, although it is situational, I would still call slaughter unfair.

But those are my experiences. Others, of course, may vary.

[kbdrand]

I agree. Most people do not have enough models to really tune their crew based on the strategy. So far we have been fielding crews more for which models we like as opposed to the strategic elements of that model.

[Ropetus]

Indeed, we have decided not to use Slaughter at all in our gaming group. It is just ridiculously easy to foil if the opponent knows what they're doing (take a cheap model and hide it somewhere). The rest of the Strategies are quite balanced, including Assassinate: yes, it can be easily foiled but then you're taking your own Master out of the game basically which hurts most crews a lot.

Schemes really add a twist to this game, though some of them are maybe too easy. Our Seamus player for example just takes Bodyguard and Army of the Dead every game and basically turns their opponent's Strategy to Assassinate (almost guaranteed 4 VP unless Seamus is killed).

-Ropetus

[Justin]

Indeed, we have decided not to use Slaughter at all in our gaming group. It is just ridiculously easy to foil if the opponent knows what they're doing (take a cheap model and hide it somewhere). The rest of the Strategies are quite balanced, including Assassinate: yes, it can be easily foiled but then you're taking your own Master out of the game basically which hurts most crews a lot.

Schemes really add a twist to this game, though some of them are maybe too easy. Our Seamus player for example just takes Bodyguard and Army of the Dead every game and basically turns their opponent's Strategy to Assassinate (almost guaranteed 4 VP unless Seamus is killed).

-Ropetus

I agree and disagree about assassinate.

In a game that is so character based, having a mission that revolves around killing the other person's leader just seems like a given. So, thematically, I like it.

And it can be balanced. But, I think, in general it's really hard to balance anything where your opponent can move what is essentially your objective around the board at will. Take again reconnoiter, you can just run your master away, along with your whole crew and hold table quarters when your opponent has assassinate.

And depending on who the crews are, it can just be not fun. But, as everything, situational and I totally see where you're coming from.

My gaming group has also stopped using slaughter entirely. I also added a new house rule at the last tournament that seems like it will stick:

After hiring crews, but before deployment, each crew has the option of spending one soul stone to reflip its strategy.

This means that if you feel you are screwed by your strategy (whatever it is: reconnoiter at 25 ss with a high cost crew, assassinate against lilith with gremlins, etc) you have some recourse. But, you do run the risk of flipping the same damn strategy, so it's no guarantee. (I'm not a fan of guarantees)

Also, it prevents your opponent being able to reliably build a crew against your strategy, since he isn't entirely sure if you'll reflip or not. He is only sure of his own.

I also want to introduce a house rule that, in the case of the black joker, your opponent chooses your strategy. They're slowly warming up to that one...

Edit: I play Seamus and do the EXACT same thing.

[kbdrand]

Although I don't think it's possible, it would be nice if there was some kind of handicapping system for VPs based on the crew. Something that would maybe make it more worth while to mix it up, rather than taking the same schemes over and over again (as an Arcanist player I'm taking Sabotage almost 100% of the time).

[Justin]

Although I don't think it's possible, it would be nice if there was some kind of handicapping system for VPs based on the crew. Something that would maybe make it more worth while to mix it up, rather than taking the same schemes over and over again (as an Arcanist player I'm taking Sabotage almost 100% of the time).

I think the easier schemes should give you a negative VP when not accomplished.

[Amarel]

Seamus and Army of the Dead makes me cry a liitle inside - it does basically turn the game into Slaughter and he can be damn tricky to put down.

We've basically gone the other way and rarely use schemes - a strategy and some fun random environment event is often the standard setup.

[Justin]

Seamus and Army of the Dead makes me cry a liitle inside - it does basically turn the game into Slaughter and he can be damn tricky to put down.

We've basically gone the other way and rarely use schemes - a strategy and some fun random environment event is often the standard setup.

You know what would be cool?

Letting the opponent choose one of the schemes, and automatically giving it the +1 for announce.

[Monkeyclops]

This whole debate on Strategy and Schemes also becomes an issue in a Tournament setting. Its tough to allow players to make a new army list each round in a tourney setting as a) this lengthens the overall time of the tourney and means that players with the most models (ie biggest wallet) have a huge advantage.

The last tourney at my local store was a static army list, but allowed for a free re-flip of the strategy. This time around we are doing 2 pre-build army lists with no re-flip, but both army lists must use the same master.

Currently, in order to win the tourney you are forced to announce both your schemes for max VP.

What if announced Schemes granted +1 VP to the opposing player if they are unfulfilled. So if you take Hold Out and announce it and complete it you get 2 VP, but if you fail to complete the req for Hold Out, you get nothing for it and I get 1 VP. Would make the entire, announce/don't announce mechanic much more interesting!

[Justin]

For tournaments I like the idea of a sideboard,

http://www.wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10372

[Prophaniti]

Well it's about time I commented again on my own thread. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who feels objectives need a bit of work.

With Slaughter, I can see why people are dropping it, but for me the strongest argument showing something isn't right, are the requirements to get 4VP's compared to assassination. i.e. Kill just the master vs. Kill the master and the entire crew. It doesn't matter how good your collection and selection skills are, or when you get to choose your crew, slaughter has significantly higher requirements than assassinate.

I also like the idea of negative VP's in an announced scheme. It reminds me of the subplots in Battlefleet Gothic (GW's space game). They were the equivalent of a randomly generated scheme and had variable 'renown' rewards (and penalties).

Currently, in Malifaux, there's no reason not to take schemes and little reason to keep them secret, so increasing the risk/reward level on them forces players to think about whether they want to take them and whether they want to anounce them.

[Atticus]

I concur that I take the same schemes virtually every time and usually see no reason not to announce. I think certain strategies are almost instant losses for certain masters, and no amount of crew building can alter that. For example, Som'er Teeth and Slaughter is almost never going to happen. He can get the occasional Assassination off, depending on the opposing caster, but Slaughter is really tough.

All of my experience has been in friendly games, so I haven't paid a great deal of attention to these, we are usually just playing and I always revert back to my kill everything/kill the caster mode and ignore strategies and schemes.

I'll see how that changes after our first tourney in a couple of weeks. We are doing 30SS with a 20 point sideboard and one additional in faction Master. I of course will not be playing Gremlins in that one due to above problems with Strategies and the impossibility of building a list and sideboard with all the restrictions on Gremlins.