The Master with the most Breadth of Playstyle

[Naahz]

Rather than write a background piece I'd rather ask this question on a blank slate.

What Master do you nominate as having the most breadth of playstyle? This can be through abilities, traits, spells or the minions, henchmen and mercs at their disposal probably a combination of both.

Can they do mellee? Can they stay in the back and support? Can they employ a successful strategy in a predominance of scenarios.

I'm new to the game, and I fully admit I'm trying to short cut some of my own strategic analysis - and see if there are some gems out there I've looked over because I didn't consider a proxy model for a sculpt I didn't care for that much.

I'm already itching to buy more of these great models so I ask now because I'm trying desperately to avoid being a jack of all trades, when I'd rather be a MASTER of ONE.

sorry, bad pun, but seriously, I'm hoping to focus my purchases by mastering one master with a wide variety of choices rather than purchasing a wide variety of masters in the hopes of knowing the faction (which I know is what many advise, but I'm thinking of something different - at least different to me)

thanks!

[Rathnard]

Zoraida. No doubt about it.

Her playstyle revolves around making her own crew better and your opponents crew worse. Combined with the ability to hire any living Wp4 model in the game and you have a master that can build a crew to any playstyle you want. Allow me to demonstrate with a selection of 25SS crews;

Glass Cannon Melee

Young Nephilim 6

Mature Nephilim 10

3x Terror Tots 9

Pure Shooting:

Rami 7

Convict Gunslinger 6

Doppelganger 8

Bayou Gremlin 3

Jack Daw-style shooting & hand-discard:

Jack Daw 10

Convict Gunslinger 6

Stitched Together 5

Madness 4

Pure Awesomesauce (also: Surprise!):

Killjoy 12

2x Terror Tots 6

Ronin 6

Anti-Wp

2x Madness 8

2x Stitched Together 10

Lilitu 7 (Zoraida can Hex off Lilitu's ability that would otherwise kill her without Lelu on the board)

Hit & Run

Bad Juju 10

3x Silurid 15

Pandora-Style

Kade 6

Candy 8

2x Sorrows 6

Madness 4

Because I want someone to use her Soulstones

Von Schill 10

Friekorps Specialist 6

2x Terror Tots 6

Gremlin Shooting

Ophelia 9

Rami 7

Francois 6

Bayou Gremlin 3

Explosions!

Papa Loco 7

Pere Ravage 6

Nurse 6

2x Terror Tots 6

Alp-machine

Coppelius 9

Desperate Merc 2

Alp 3

2x Stitched 10

Glass Cannon MK2

Lilitu 7

2x Lelu 14

Terror Tot 3

There is a huge variety of playstyles in the above crew lists, but with Zoraida all of them are decent, viable, crews. Other Masters (Levi, maybe Hamelin) might have more minions available to them, but their own inherent rules tend to force a specific playstyle on their crew regardless. Zoraida, on the other hand, will adapt her playstyle to whatever crew you lump with her.

[tadaka]

I would say levi not that Big boobs is not a great answer.

[Rathnard]

I would say levi not that Big boobs is not a great answer.

Why Levi though? He has a huge range of available minions, sure, but for the most part they're taken in support of Levi's playstyle (kill everything, die, come back to life, kill everything., etc etc) by acting as a bodyguard/distraction/scrap counter, or they're used as an objective grabber.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

No one master has it all. This is a game is designed with everything having a counter.

As for best support master:

Zoradia for everything that Rathnard said. Nicodem and Hoffman being a close second.

As for best Melee expert master:

Toss up between Lady J and Lilith. Lady J can do the most damage in melee, but Lilith is a little more balanced to survive the melee encounter.

As for best shooting masters:

Toss up between Gremlins and Perdita. Gremlins having range and numbers, Perdita and guild having the sharpest shooters and hardest hitting troopers.

Best caster:

Pandora with thousand cuts style. Rasputina and Sonia are also very specialized casters.

As Ranthard said Zoradia is the best support master but she has access to the most variety of crew lists.

[tadaka]

Shrug levi has a massive number of play styles.

Hard hitting glass cannons

Joss

Steamborg

Desolation engine

Shooters

Watcher

Ryle

Alice

Board control

Belles

Crooked men

hard to kill brutes

Peacekeeper

killjoy

bette

I all ways come back

bette

Ashes and dust

Juju

Hit and run

Riders

Speed

Ashes and dust (I can get treasure in my deployment first turn)

necropunks

Riders

Colladi

Everything explodes

Gamin

Steampunk aracnid

Cant shoot me

Soulstone miner

hooder rider

Juju

Rase the dead

Molly

Alice

Mass swarm

To many to list

[Wodschow]

Perdita can actually do quite a selection of various stuff. She's largely invariant to the crew you take with her as she can easily hold her own thanks to having the best defensive in the game (Df8,ImmuneToInfluence,Evasive), so can go with any Guild models.

She's got a nice ranged attack (which can be used in melee aswell), has Obey, is speedy and can do alpha strikes if taken with the Family (which in combination with her Obey can be especially terrifying).

Zoraida as has been mentioned before can take a very varied crew and make it work, but she'll not play that different a role in it either way (unless you go for Collodi + Zoraida Wicked Doll factory which I suppose is doable).

Som'er can go Gunline, Pig Heavy or Alpha Stank - and I don't think any other Master can emulate any of those playstyles really.

I don't know.. Most Masters do something they're better at than all the others.. And most can opt for a different focus within their Faction models - Arcanists tends to be less flexible in their crew selection though.

[Wodschow]

@tadaka:

Yeah, Leveticus has a near inexhaustible amount of crews to pick from, but they all require different models (so does Zoraida's by the way). Which sort of destroys the purpose of the OP I think.. Also Leveticus himself mainly does the same thing within all of those lists..

Also..

Ashes and dust (I can get treasure in my deployment first turn)

How?!

[nothingatall544]

As a bit of a different approach I'd say Von Schill and the Freikorps.

They're the most well rounded crew I've seen, each model has good move CC and ranged firepower, not to mention things like the Trapper that has excellent range, Von Schill with excellent movement, and the Librarian with amazing support.

If I was looking to just get a few models to play with over and over, I'd go with them. They can inherently play several different ways without changing that crew composition.

[tadaka]

Take alice 3 spa and ashes

Move the first spa out and give him a 10 inch jump to 0 action out to. Have alice give ashes and dust reactivate. Have him push out with a 0 action to the spa and he takes the wounds. This puts the spa 10 inches out with the 6 inch deployment zone and pushing to the far side of the 10 inch spa that is around 18 inches basicly in base contact. Pick it up and move back. reactivate and move some more 16 inches back the other way. Ashes then kills him self with the reactivation dropping it on your doorstep and he is able to reform the next turn full wounds.

[Wodschow]

Thought you meant with the list you mentioned and thought you said in one activation.. Soeh.. Nvm.. Several crews can bring it to their if they spend an entire turn on it and assumes that the enemy does nothing about it.

[tadaka]

I only ment to show he is a fast model that is all.

Thought you meant with the list you mentioned and thought you said in one activation.. Soeh.. Nvm.. Several crews can bring it to their if they spend an entire turn on it and assumes that the enemy does nothing about it.

Im curious what other crews can move it back to deployment first turn. Never sceen any one else pull it off.

Edited February 22, 2011 by tadaka

[Wodschow]

@tadaka:

Oh yeah, no denying that.

@nothingatall:

I disagree with you in your assessment of the Freikorps being as flexible as you claim :/

All of them have very few options in what they'll do at any given time - even Von Schill (when compared to other Masters at least). There's not really room for too many imaginative ways to play them.

[Ratty]

In some ways Kirai could be put into the mix. In that she can play a few different ways and doesn't rely on the initial crew list you choose all that much. You can choose to play her for ultra fast objective grabbing, Horde Summoning, Melee Assasination or a mix of styles in the same game.

[Wodschow]

Im curious what other crews can move it back to deployment first turn. Never sceen any one else pull it off.

Lilith, Colette, Kirai can for sure through various shenanigans.

Actually.. Every Arcanist crew with Coryphée duet + Performer - Colette just makes it even easier, but isn't a necessity.

Started making a list of other crews that with the right models could pick it up and bring it most (if not all) of the way, but in the end it included every Master in the game.. So that was kind of useless.. xDD

Edit: Albeit some of them did take some alternative lists and would require a bit of a sacrifice, but hey..

Edited February 22, 2011 by Wodschow

[nothingatall544]

@Wodschow: That's fine, few do

[Wodschow]

@Wodschow: That's fine, few do

Ah, but please enlighten us, I might just be ignorant and fail to see how they can be played in several different ways with the same crew composition.

I don't think there is alot utility in each of the Freikorps models, at least not compared to what could be found in the average Malifaux crew :/

Edit:

I realize I might've sounded sarcastic here, but it really wasn't meant that way..

Edited February 22, 2011 by Wodschow

[nothingatall544]

I have to leave for class but I'll post something up a bit later today

[karn987]

Wow rapid posts on this thread heh.

I do agree Zoraida is the queen of variety of play styles. But I think Leveticus is the close second. Sure he always has his same set style of play, but his crew choice is so huge he can do nearly any style of play. So because of his Hiring abilities, it puts him right up their with Zoraida as being the big 2 variety masters in the game.

Also yeah, the Freikorps to me are rather rigid. They have a few things they can pull off, but they are and always seem to be designed with having that rigid style in mind.

But that's the thing about opinions =D no one is right.

[Naahz]

so it seems you guys define the ability to play a variety of ways mostly by the minions that they can hire rather than the variety of ways their abilties can be employed with the models that are available (except perhaps the mention of perdita) I'm not really seeing how Freikorps fits this. It seems to me they can kill things with knives or they can kill things with guns. Not sure that fits my variety of play styles - but perhaps I am missing things!

I though that Nico or McMourning would come out at some point, but I guess their summoning is more "at the right moment" toolbox as opposed to variable play style.

Between Levi and Zoraida I'm assuming the preference for wp=4 or undead/construct is 99% likely to coincide with your preference between the two.

Ok so if its close, or even, or debatable between Zoraida and Leveticus then I guess we should go to a tie breaker:

You've played MASTER Z/L for a few months. You own 20 models or so. You want to add a second master to your collection for the tourney in 2 months. Who is going to have the better time of that? Outcasts or Neverborn? This could be in terms of the models you'd own that now are useless, or the fact that the replacing master doesn't offer as marketdly different a playstyle/scenario ability as the other.

Please don't answer with "well Zoraida can be done with all neverborn" because the premise of how she got into the top spot for variety was by doing the exact opposite more than any other caster

[Naahz]

Ratty, are you more referring to the abilities Kirai chooses to use in a given scenario or more to the ability to include any spirit model? I think the latter, but I'd like to be sure. Maybe in the interest of the strength of the thread for future "search"-ers you could include a few different styled lists and the abililties and spells from it that you would feature to promote that lists style?

[Wodschow]

None of the other Outcast Masters can use the models Leveticus uses (save a few), depending on what models you bought for him it'd be better to go Ressurectionist or Hoffman if you wanted to a fluent transition to another Master. (Edit: Or maybe Ramos)

I don't think variety of crew is a good measure of the breadth of playstyle you're looking for, but you did mention it as one of the first criterias in your opening, which is why Leveticus and Zoraida gets mentioned.

Leveticus will usually do his thing and the variety in playstyle is merely from the minions being swapped. Zoraida too more or less always does the same thing in the crew she's in, but since she uses her (and her opponents) Minions to do her bidding through Obey the different playstyles from swapping her crew are more pronounced.

Edit:

I still don't really have a clue as to what you're looking for.

You only want a single master, but don't mind getting a billion models for this one master to add variety?

Switching Master is going to have the largest impact on your playstyle, so if you just want different ones, why not do this?

Kirai can do a fair amount of different stuff, and she can also change focus during the game and adapt to the flow. She'll require a few models though and don't really share those with others.

Edited February 22, 2011 by Wodschow

[Ratty]

Ratty, are you more referring to the abilities Kirai chooses to use in a given scenario or more to the ability to include any spirit model? I think the latter, but I'd like to be sure. Maybe in the interest of the strength of the thread for future "search"-ers you could include a few different styled lists and the abililties and spells from it that you would feature to promote that lists style?

Actually no, a lot of Masters your stuck with a play style as soon as you choose your list, with Kirai you can alter your playstyle during a game drastically. Which is why I mentioned her. Compared to Zoraida or Leviticus she doesn't have the choice of models, the spirit rule only gives her access to about 4 extra models. However no matter what you select you can shift to playing a melee horde, or fast moving objective grabber or run her in an assasination role.

[Naahz]

Wodschow there are two ways to focus an answer to my original question:

1) The Levi/Zorraida view which favors their ability to hire widely varient crews to provide variant playstyle

and

2) Ratty and Nothingatall544's (Friekorps' proponent) view who say that the master itself is highly variant.

The best answer to my question would seem to be a synergy of both 1 and 2. Maybe not possible in Malifaux, but if not possible which comes the closest.

But can Z and L both : do ranged/spells, do control, do mellee, play support, play direct?

Based on the feedback so far it looks like Zoraida and Levi are again close.

If all other things are equal (or to close to call) but if levi uses entirely different models than any other outcast master then I think folks should lean towards Z so they can shift into a second master more easily when they do MASTER their Master

I'm not saying this is the best way to play Malifaux I just thought it would be an interesting topic.

Edited February 22, 2011 by Naahz

[nilus]

I though that Nico or McMourning would come out at some point, but I guess their summoning is more "at the right moment" toolbox as opposed to variable play style.

Well your initial post wanted Masters good at all play styles and Resurrectionists all have one major hole in there crews and that is ranged combat. Sure there are some options with Mercs and some stuff in book 2 but overall its a pretty big gap. Its a gap they can handles since they can play the attrition and summon game.

For what you want I would probably stick to Zoriada. She can hire models from a lot of places which gives you a lot of options. She herself isn't as versatile as she is mostly about obeying, poisoning and running away.