Is this game well balanced?

[Necromorph]

IMHO right now the game feels fairly balanced faction to faction. That's about as strong an opinion as facts can support at this stage.

One more little thing to add on this. Balancing faction to faction, IMO, doesn't make the game balanced. I mean, it does to a degree, and if you play for nothing but fun and casual play then sure, it doesn't seem so bad, if you enjoy getting your S**t packed by your one or two "counter crews" almost every time you play them. However, if you are happy to win some and lose some, then it's fine.

As we said in "the other thread" if you are in it to win, then you are forced to play very specific crews from each faction in order to accomplish that (i.e. colette for arcanists). Again though, it depends on your goals for playing the game.

Neither way is the right or wrong way to look at the game, but from a casual view, the game is balanced, from a competitive view, it is lacking.

/sigh, didn't see magno's post...basically +1 to his post as well...as always, better at constructing arguments than I, haha.

Edited August 1, 2011 by Necromorph

[Odin1981]

Again with my nondescript wording here. I should have put an extra line in there like "even these masters have counters" not to say they have really strong counters generally. Really though...the best counters to the "top 5" are the top 5. Hamelin and Colette can beat each other up pretty well. Colette is very noninteractive, and Odin, who plays her and Guild is pretty firm on the idea that guild can counter her hard due to their high cb, range, and dg output...I tend to agree...just takes some smart play to lock down the duet. Hamelin, depending on your list, will either get wrecked or do the wrecking vs. dreamer and pandora.

It's all pretty relative. That was more a comment meant to "easy the blow" of telling an unfamiliar player that the game isn't all that well balanced (in my opinion).

I wouldn't say counter her hard as much as I would say the have a lot of the tools needed to give her pause (damage really isn't the issue as much as that they as a faction have the most resource disruption compared to any other faction).

Granted that could just be the way I play my particular colette crew ( I prefer to play her as a combat style list compared to the non interactive way). But also on a sidenote the 5 times or so I've played colette against various guild crews I haven't lost either.

My personal believe on colette though is the only match up she is 50/50 on is hamelin (have yet to play a well played dreamer match yet so can't comment on how that matchup would play out) and that isn't saying much. However when you look at arcanists as a whole though they needed a crew to come out that wasn't a joke like the "rest of their book one masters" minus maybe ramos when a certain threshold of book 2 minions finally see release.

I would say that the above statements I said though our purely just my perspective and our in no way fact.

Edited August 1, 2011 by Odin1981

[Magno]

Balancing faction to faction, IMO, doesn't make the game balanced. I mean, it does to a degree,...

I wholeheartedly agree. I read a lot of people making the statement that factions are balanced but it still doesn't make sense to me, since players still have the freedom to pick masters as they see fit and the fact that certain masters are tier 1, means they will get picked more often.

You can walk through a whole tournament without seeing a master's counter or pulling scenario/schemes that are optimal for the crew you're playing, imbalance is carrying you part of the way.

If you have roughly ~50/50 shot at winning a game based on the models on the table over a spread of different scenarios (not considering probabilities and player skill), then that system enjoys balance.

Otherwise, perturbations of lucky match-ups has too strong an influence over the tournament results.

[LoboStele]

I think the thing to remember is that almost all of us have a fairly limited personal perspective here. We play with our LGS groups and such, and it's quite likely that within those groups, there may be masters that never see play.

My particular group has about 20 people total, but more like 12-14 on most League play nights. That said, there is exactly one guy running Arcanists right now. And he doesn't own Marcus, and only just bought Colette. So I haven't seen a game against either of those Masters ANYWHERE in our LGS for probably 4 months.

I would wager that we all have situations like this. In some areas, Neverborn may not be very popular, and so nobody plays against Zoraida for a while. In other areas, Outcasts aren't as popular, so people haven't felt the full wrath of things like Hamelin or Gremlins. We are each biased based on games that we are regularly able to play/observe.

The other thing to remember....what is Wyrd's goal in terms of balance? Are they seeking to balance things on a per Master basis, or per Faction? Well, I'd say it's almost certainly per Faction, since that is how Gaining Grounds is set up, and that's how the tournaments at GenCon are being run (with the exception of Wild Cards on Sunday). So to make a fuss or complain that X Master isn't balanced....well...maybe he's not SUPPOSED to be balanced on his own.

Now, all that said, I think Book 2 showed where Wyrd really wants to take the game. As an example, the example given prior about Lady J versus the Ressers, and in the Book 1 era, LJ was probably about a 75% win chance against Ressers. Certainly not balanced. But now throw Kirai into the mix, and all of the sudden, Guild players have to make a tough choice. Taking LJ against Ressers, and ending up facing Kirai could be really frustrating. So take Sonnia instead? She excels at killing Spirits, but she doesn't do so hot against Flesh Constructs or the like.

THIS is the goal and balance that Wyrd is obviously seeking. Making it so that players have to make tough, strategic decisions, even as far back as your crew selection. You can't just net-deck a crew together with Malifaux simply because 100 people in various places say it's the best. Outcasts won the big event at Adepticon this year, but most people were predicting Neverborn, IIRC. Maybe the Strategies and Terrain just worked out better that way. Maybe it was card flips. Maybe it was simply skill level.

IMO, there are a LOT more factors involved in judging the balance of Malifaux than most other game systems. From what I've seen so far though, it seems pretty well put together, and as with any game system, simply comes down to the individual player's skill levels.

[gru6y]

Ok, so we'd need to have data complied to support the claim of balance or no balance.

Are all master's played evenly over a spread of tournaments and locations? Or are a particular set of masters played, a set rarely played and a set that typically win quite often?

From the few tournies that I've been in and observed, there are indeed some masters that rarely ever get played and a set of masters that are very popular for their effectiveness.

Are there some masters that really do well against a majority of other masters? Yes. hence imbalance. If the factions were intended to be balanced, not the masters, then you would have individual masters have equal sets of opposing masters that they are better than and not better than, such that compiling all the master of the factions together, their "paper-scissor-rock" match-ups equal out.

Is this true?

Are there an equal number of masters that Lady J will typically defeat as opposed to loose to?

Is this true for Marcus?

For Hamlin?

For Seamus?

For Kirai?

If Lady J and Perdita are affective vs 75% of other masters, Sonia and Hoffman only 25%, then there still isn't really balance here, since players will majority of the time take Lady J and Perdita and have majority advantages. Now, if you were forced to play Hoffman and Sonia in certain match-ups, then you could say that the tournament/event was balanced and a truer test to individuals playing abilities.

Some very interesting points here.

Though I don't feel I agree with everything.

First of all, I think it is very hard to firmly establish solid facts one way or the other (just like MythicFOX said) because it is simply to early.

Also, your definition of imbalance given in the third paragraph is IMO off. I see your point, but it kind of still goes to comparing master to master.

Are all masters within faction equally good? No, but do they have to be? In my opinion not really. This kind of implies that there has to be only one good master within a faction for it to be good and the game to be balanced. Luckily it is not the case, as hopefully everyone will agree that each faction has at least one very powerful master and at least one that can be played competetively. Of course, ideally, all of them should be equally competetive, but looking at how new Malifaux is, I'd say Wyrd did do at least good enough on the balance front.

As Malifaux is similar to Warmahordes and most of people think of Warmahordes as a balanced system, I'd like to compare balance within these systems. First of all, Warmahordes is also balanced on a faction to faction basis with some really bad matchups present and yet no-one seems to make a fuss out of it.

Lets also take into consideration the complexity of both systems. Malifaux presents us with many more master-specific minions with stronger synergies, which of course is much harder to balance than a number of Casters who more or less can easily choose from the same pool of units.

Now given all of this, as well as the amount of recources Wyrd and PP has and the lifespan of both systems, I belive that demanding from Wyrd for Malifaux to be as balanced as Warmahordes is unfair to say the least.

[LoboStele]

I wholeheartedly agree. I read a lot of people making the statement that factions are balanced but it still doesn't make sense to me, since players still have the freedom to pick masters as they see fit and the fact that certain masters are tier 1, means they will get picked more often.

You can walk through a whole tournament without seeing a master's counter or pulling scenario/schemes that are optimal for the crew you're playing, imbalance is carrying you part of the way.

If you have roughly ~50/50 shot at winning a game based on the models on the table over a spread of different scenarios (not considering probabilities and player skill), then that system enjoys balance.

Otherwise, perturbations of lucky match-ups has too strong an influence over the tournament results.

What makes a Master Tier 1 though? Does it really hold up under a time-limit and Gaining Grounds rules? Most people get annoyed as @#$% with Hamelin, but I've yet to see anyone spouting about how awesome he is in tournaments, and how many times they've won.

Same with Pandora. Everybody thinks of her as a top-end Master, and a pain to deal with, but most people look at Chompy as being the Tier 1 Neverborn master. Then again, as I noted above, Chompy didn't win Adepticon, did he?

I see Kirai touted as being a 'Tier 1' master many times, but I couldn't tell you the last time I actually lost to a Kirai list, and that's playing stuff like Ramos, which normally wouldn't be considered a 'good' matchup. Is some of it player skill? Maybe. Some of it is all the other factors I mentioned above.

I guess, all said and done.....what game exists that DOESN'T have Tier 1 stuff? None. It's impossible. As soon as you create a rule set, something will float to the top. Again with the Adepticon example though, NOBODY seems to put the Viktoria's on the 'Tier 1' list. Maybe on 'Tier 1.5' in most discussions I read. And yet, that's what won the main tourney at A-con.

A game company can only do it's best in trying to balance things, and as they see unbalance rising to the surface, they add to the game to control it (Kirai vs. LJ). Personally, I think Wyrd has done a pretty fine job of that so far.

[Hatchethead]

I've always wondered if announcing leader choice prior to hiring would make a difference ...

Same basic setup rules apply, but after announcing faction, flipping for terrain (optional), deployment type and strategies, prior to hiring minions, both sides announce which Master/Henchman they intend to take. Once both players have this information, they are free to build.

Is this something that is flipped for? Does one player announce first, allowing the second player to "react" to the initial players choice? Or is this something that is declared simultaneously with no input upon which to base the choice? Either way, knowing which Master/Henchman you are facing would inform your minion selection, possibly offsetting "bad matchup" syndrome (offsetting, not eliminating).

[Buhallin]

Well, what defines balance?

To me, it's a question of whether two players can go into a relatively competitive environment, and have their chances of winning defined largely by their skill; that their pre-game choices don't cripple them, or give them a huge advantage.

In Malifaux, what are those pre-game choices? Faction - that's it. So if I go into a Malifaux tournament having chosen Arcanists, am I screwed? What if I picked Guild, am I guaranteed a top-tier finish? Not even close.

This is what I was saying before - some players seem very unwilling to accept Malifaux's approach to balance. Even if Colette is a solid Arcanist master, and the go-to, that doesn't mean that Rasputina and even Marcus aren't better choices. You ever try playing Colette when you've flipped a Forested encounter?

Will Marcus come out as often as Colette? Probably not. But that's only a problem if you refuse to accept with the balance of Malifaux as it's designed. You can choose to accept it or not, I suppose, but it seem pretty invalid to complain about a game's balance when you refuse to play it as intended, IMHO.

The thing I can't figure out is why some people are so unwilling to accept this. Compare it to caster kill in Warmachine - like it or hate it, it's a core part of the design. Remove it, and the balance changes dramatically. Try and argue with people that the game is unbalanced, when you refuse to use caster kill, and you're not likely to get a lot of traction.

So we have again ended up in the same position, with people arguing more that they don't like (or, strangely, disbelieve the existence of) Malifaux's approach to balance. None of that has actually addressed the core concept of whether the game is actually balanced or not, as it exists and is intended to be played. I actually consider that a pretty solid sign that it is, indeed, nicely balanced.

[Keltheos]

I thought someone said early on this shouldn't turn into another balance thread...

[Math Mathonwy]

I thought someone said early on this shouldn't turn into another balance thread...

I'd say that boat sailed when the OP chose the title for this thread.

[LoboStele]

In Malifaux, what are those pre-game choices? Faction - that's it. So if I go into a Malifaux tournament having chosen Arcanists, am I screwed? What if I picked Guild, am I guaranteed a top-tier finish? Not even close.

This is what I was saying before - some players seem very unwilling to accept Malifaux's approach to balance. Even if Colette is a solid Arcanist master, and the go-to, that doesn't mean that Rasputina and even Marcus aren't better choices. You ever try playing Colette when you've flipped a Forested encounter?

Well said.

On the note or Arcanists, if my opponent has the Supply Wagon strategy and I'm playing Arcanists, there's almost no way in hell I'm playing anything other than Rasputina in that matchup. Ice Pillars >> Supply Wagon.

So, the balance is there, but not from a kill-em-all perspective. At least, that's how I feel.

[Bigkid]

Me and the lads down the club have a saying,

Malifaux must be balanced because everything is broken!!

To repeat what's been said before, I've never played a game before that rewarded knowing your enemy as much as Malifaux. It is the epitome of 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again (with different minions...)'.

[Mentat_Canis]

As I said before I think it is Balance.

I have been thinking though and I have a bigger questions. Once you are in the game do your really care if it is balanced the obvious answer is yes but I will say if it is not balanced did you have fun, if the answer is yes to that then I ask did your opponent have fun. If the answer to both those is yes then who cares if my army is 25% better which is normally the difference between top and bottom tier as it seems to be described. I guess when people say it isn't balanced I don't know if I am blind or you are but I am having fun and I hope you are too cause its a game have fun with it.

[Hookers]

I wholeheartedly agree. I read a lot of people making the statement that factions are balanced but it still doesn't make sense to me, since players still have the freedom to pick masters as they see fit and the fact that certain masters are tier 1, means they will get picked more often.

We're going through this again? If you think that the game needs to do more than be balanced around factions THEN YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

The game is not "kill your opponent." That is every other game. The one strategy that is "kill your opponent" is also "kill your opponent less than he kills you," which is still more interesting than "kill your opponent." You have an objective. It changes every match. You can pick things that are good at accomplishing it. No master is equally good at all strategies. Every master is strong at some strategies. Every one. Every one. I'm extremely sorry that people are not good with Marcus and feel the need to bash him because of their own ineffectiveness with him, turning others off from him. He is highly mobile and extremely useful for at least half of the strategies. Oh, you decided to ignore your objective, run head first into your opponent and let him kill you? My deepest sympathies.

People who believe Malifaux is not balanced, or at the least, not balanced enough to be played competitively are taking their preconceptions that they have learned from other games and applying it to Malifaux, forcing it to try to conform to them as opposed to learning a new game. You should not attempt to build an all-comers list because it is not required for tournaments. To do so is simply putting yourself at a disadvantage. You should not ignore your strategies and schemes in an attempt to simply kill your opponent's models. Yes, you need to have two masters to be competitive, but that doesn't stop you from buying and using the models that you like aesthetically and fluffwise. Any model you buy will be useful at some point.

There are no super-imposed conditions under which the game is balanced. The game was designed with those conditions in place. They exist. They are part of the game, not qualifications. The fact that you aren't playing the game that way is not the game's fault. You aren't supposed to make an all-comers list. You aren't supposed to only have one master to choose from. You can. It doesn't stop you from enjoying the game. But you won't be as competitive with less options. Its the same fact in every game: in order to be competitive you must go beyond simply having the bare minimum.

I can name hundreds of fluffy, fun list ideas for infinity comprised only of models that I like the looks of that would fair horribly in a competitive environment. And I enjoy infinity, but I've made lists that fair better than others. Every game is like that. The difference is when you buy a model in Malifaux, it does have a purpose and will be used for something at some point as opposed to the stupid Moblot that is an expensive HI with only one wound and I'd rather have a wulver or vet kazak in its place every single time. In other games if you don't like a model it gets put on a self, or sold. In Malifaux if you don't like a model, it is still good at something and will still be used at some point.

I mean, there are some unbalanced things about the game, sure. Some models should probably cost a point more. Some might have an ability too many. But its not the far reaching "if you don't play the most powerful master you lose" kind of imbalance that people have said.

[Jmach]

From my experience I feel that the game is fairly well balanced, just some crews are slightly better at up front damage than say ones that require more of a combo to pull things off. Some crews might not be as good at a few scenarios but you can make that up by completing strategies.

[D_Arquebus]

Post #39

+1 to all of that.

Some Masters have more utility across various missions and match ups. Others less. Faction wise they all balance out. Why? Because the good folks at Wyrd designed their shiny game that way .

Now I understand that the game doesn't necessarily flow exactly to that mold. I ONLY have Collette from Arcanists, I ONLY have Ortegas for Guild. Why? Because the fluff, models and theme of each force for me is paramount. So does this lead to some dodgy match ups? Probably. But is it a game design flaw? I'd say no. It's a personal choice, like any choice of army or crew for any game. I DO have 3/4 Outcasts now and 2/4 Ressers so obviously the themes there suit me better, different strokes for different folks.

I play Blood Bowl mostly. In the good old days (and probably still today ) their main fan forum would have on every page a "XYZ Team is broken!!" often sitting alongside "XYZ team is too weak". When I started Malifaux I took Gremlins. Most of the threads back then were "Gremlins are too weak" and talked about lack of WP, Damage output, ability to kill hard to kill models. Some were "Gremlins are broken" and complained about being out activated 2:1 and easy healing flips, access to Fast on everyone, etc. The difference? Some of these players were playing in a locality where they didn't understand how to get the synergies of the Gremlins to work for them against their opponent, or more importantly for the Strategy/ schemes they took. The others were playing where the Gremlin Player did understand these things and they hadn't thought of a counter.

I have lost 1 from 18 games with Somer. I say this not to stroke my own ego but to point out the play style of Somer just made sense to me. Funnily enough a lot of the easy wins for me have since been cuddled. I never saw a treasure counter (mine or my opponents) that I didn't get to and move at least 5" from the centre by end of turn one. And good luck Slaughtering a Gremlin Crew that spams an average of two extra models per turn over the course of the game. I never even used the Skeetas, which some said were essential to stand any chance. Just spam gremlins and out activate my opponents. Focus on taking Schemes that are contrary to my main mission or my opponents. They have Stake a Claim, Take Break through. Force them to split their crew and magnify your numbers advantage. Sure my spamming wouldn't work against Nico and his Undead horde, it would just feed that beast. So I had to actually learn some of Somer's Crews other tricks. Because HIS tricks are somewhat specialised. Perdita's trick is a little simpler. Get into 10" and unleash lead filled death on the enemy. Works a little easier when starting? yes. Works against everyone? No.

Probably the biggest contributor to any perception of imbalance is the tremendous learning curve in the game. Know not just your own Master, Crew, Faction but also your opponents. It is only after you know most of the nasty tricks you can pull and your opponent can pull that the game settles into a test of your ability to play your opponent. Getting hugely surprised is the main reason I've seen for people getting wiped out. Though again it should be noted from the 4 games I've been wiped out in before (3 with Somer, 1 with Seamus) I won one, Drew 2 and lost 1). SO make sure you play the Strategy and Schemes before going just for blood.

Cheers

[ispep]

If master a can't beat master b in an all out, fight to the death, battle royal, I'd say deep down, the game is not "balanced". That isn't to say it isn't fun or interesting or entertaining, but it isn't balanced.

It shouldn't matter the order you pick your crews, the schemes you choose, or the strategies you flip. If you want the option of a flat out brawl or fixed lists or whatever, a truly balanced system would support that.

Saying the factions are balanced when you play the strategies is essentially saying the strategies are balanced, the rest of the game isn't.

[CRC]

If master a can't beat master b in an all out, fight to the death, battle royal, I'd say deep down, the game is not "balanced". That isn't to say it isn't fun or interesting or entertaining, but it isn't balanced.

Every master can beat any other master in a straight up duel, because luck is a factor in this game.

Besides, the master isn't the whole crew, you've got another 6-8 models on the table, and they change the game a bit.

Even ignoring all that, that's not the game. Your statement is like saying chess isn't balanced if a player can win, yet have fewer pieces on the board than his opponent.

Of course you can win with fewer pieces, you win by taking their king.

In Malifaux, you win by getting VPs, and those come from strategies and schemes.

[Q'iq'el]

If master a can't beat master b in an all out, fight to the death, battle royal, I'd say deep down, the game is not "balanced". That isn't to say it isn't fun or interesting or entertaining, but it isn't balanced.

It shouldn't matter the order you pick your crews, the schemes you choose, or the strategies you flip. If you want the option of a flat out brawl or fixed lists or whatever, a truly balanced system would support that.

Saying the factions are balanced when you play the strategies is essentially saying the strategies are balanced, the rest of the game isn't.

This is simply an absolutely false premise.

Game has its objective. It needs to be balanced around battle-royal play only if it is the games objective. If you want to use product designed with something else in mind for that, you are using the wrong product.

And to address the general trend of the thread:

The entire "game must be balanced" tune is also a bit off. Games have objectives. Absolute balance is needed only if the objective of the game is to measure the ability to think forward and predict movements as well as ability to remember past experiences.

Any moment you broaden definition of skill, you realise balance is not needed. Good knowledge of the system, remembering all the intricate rules, understanding how to build ultimate combo - this too is skill and it for an asymmetric game to work, players must be able to de-balance it a bit with their choices.

Moreover, I'd risk a hypothesis that a truly competitive game cannot be balanced. After all the difference in the player skill too is a form of imbalance - it's especially obvious in sports, and there're few games as competitive as sport in their spirit.

Where balance really matters, is casual play. It's when you want everyone to have fun and you don't want people to drop the game you love because they feel their favorite master can't win. Obviously there are work-arounds, like captivating storytelling, fascinating terrain, great friends to play with - but if the system is flawed, the community has to make that effort, so a balanced game is greatly prefered.

I'd also risk saying, without much proof, that we can blame MMO for the obsession with balance. Traditionally tabletop communities were mostly casual and the players of this type mixed with competitive players mostly during tournaments. It was OK, because a casual player knows he is competing against himself in a tournament - trying to be a bit better than last time, rather than trying to win.

In MMOs however, casual players have to share the game with competitive ones on a day to day basis. Any imbalance not only makes their game not fun, but also bents the narrative - it is hard to maintain the illusion of fantasy world when you see only rogues around and can't find a clerk or priest. Entire areas become inaccessible to players as everybody spams LF Tank in the general channel. This is a very real experience which makes people yearn for balance and that spills over to tabletop games.

But in tabletop games balance was never really an issue. I think that is the reason why GW struggles so much with its ruleset - they come from day and age where balance was a general feel of the game and nobody cared much. It's hard to switch the design philosophy now.

Say what you want about Malifaux, but it is from the start designed as objective based game. It may not be balanced yet, but there's no better way to create a balanced game than to make it objective oriented. Rest is figuring out quirks. Even 40K and Fantasy got more balanced the moment GW made it objective oriented, and they merely piggy-backed the concept on the fundamentally older concepts of their games.

Edited August 2, 2011 by Q'iq'el

[paradox]

This is simply an absolutely false premise.

No it's not.

That said, I HOPE Mali doesn't TRY to be a big tourney game (though that hope seems slim). I hope they try to do something different and keep pushing to find a way to have big, competative events that are not a simple tournament. Why not asymmetrical play? Team events? Story-driven events/event-driven story?

There is no need to focus so singularly on 1 v 1, my crew v your crew, play.

Other than that's what people want, so they can metric out the results and declare X or Y the best and A or B the worst.

It's part of being a gamer.

[Hatchethead]

... and therein lies the problem, a schism in the community. On one side you have those individuals who honestly believe true balance can only be measured by a no frills, symmetrical fight to the death. On the other, you have a group who insist that such traditional balance methodology simply cannot be applied to Malifaux.

Obviously the discussion is far deeper and more complex than that - admittedly my observation is a broad generalization and overly simplistic - but there does appear to be a noticeable divide along those lines.

[Buhallin]

If master a can't beat master b in an all out, fight to the death, battle royal, I'd say deep down, the game is not "balanced". That isn't to say it isn't fun or interesting or entertaining, but it isn't balanced.

It shouldn't matter the order you pick your crews, the schemes you choose, or the strategies you flip. If you want the option of a flat out brawl or fixed lists or whatever, a truly balanced system would support that.

Saying the factions are balanced when you play the strategies is essentially saying the strategies are balanced, the rest of the game isn't.

So what you're saying, basically, is that if you remove all the elements of the game that create balance, and play it in a way that is specifically not intended by the designers, the result is not balanced.

<shrug> I really can't argue with that. But that doesn't make it a valid point. It's like arguing that Warhammer or Warmachine is unbalanced once you remove the points cost and just let people take even numbers of models, and a "truly balanced" game would still be balanced if you played it like that.

Does it really matter what part of the game creates the balance? Taken on a whole, is the game balanced? Yes. Is it unbalanced if you remove a critical part of the game? Sure, just like if you remove points costs from models in most games. Again, true and valid are not the same thing.

[Q'iq'el]

No it's not.

This is called a thought experiment:

If the premise is true, can you sue it to ANY game?

Can you say, water swimming free-style is fair only if all the players have equal chance to kill each other?

Can you say a game of Ludo is balanced or not balanced based on the ability of one pawn to beat another?!?

The point is: It doesn't even apply! The premise is thus false. It applies only to one kind of war-games and not to all miniature games or games in general.

Some miniature games are war-games. They are originally designed around pitted battles. Warhammer franchise is the best example of this.

Not all miniature games are war games. Malifaux in particular is not a wargame, but rather a faction based miniature RPG where factions strive to gain fictional advantage in fictional universe by realizing certain simplified objectives. It is a power game. It's closer to Risk, as a genre, than to Warhammer (ok, exaggerating a bit, but I'm thinking chiefly about the game philosophy).

It is not the point of the game to kill the enemy - it never was. Players who want pitted battle project their experience with other miniature games on Malifaux and take it for a game it is not.

Granted, there is one Strategy (Shared Slaughter) where Malifaux becomes a pitched battle. You can pick up a crew and a master who can do that, so again, the ability to do so is part of the game - no need to maintain perfect balance here.

And note, that even Shared Slaughter is not battle-royal. You can win through other means than simply overwhelming the opponent.

Edited August 2, 2011 by Q'iq'el

[ispep]

Variable effects that dictate the balance are not indicators of balance. Just because master a with strategy a1 and scheme a2 can win against master b with strategy b1 and strategy b2 doesn't mean its balanced. Being good only when you have the proper elements, some of which are random, doesn't create tangible numbers.

A straight up fight will give you measurable results. When the only variable involved is the players luck and/or skill, you can clearly establish that x model is worth its SS cost. If model x is worth its cost in one situation, but not another, is it really worth its cost at all?

If you can't base a models effectiveness on raw stats, then you can't balance them between each other. 1 SS should equal a set value. If a model costs 4 SS, it should earn the set value x 4. If a model cost 9 SS, it should earn the set value x 9, regardless of anything else.

If you can not establish a system where you have tangible evidence of a models universal worth, you can't have balance. The rules can be balanced. The objectives can be balanced. But the individual models will not be balanced.

[Q'iq'el]

A straight up fight will give you measurable results. When the only variable involved is the players luck and/or skill, you can clearly establish that x model is worth its SS cost. If model x is worth its cost in one situation, but not another, is it really worth its cost at all?

Straight up fight in a game is no different to straight up race through terrain or straight up survivability - it is a factor only when the objective is to fight, reach the goal first or survive for the game duration. It isn't a factor (or it isn't the only factor) when the objectives are complex or winning the fight is merely one of the tools to achieve these objectives.

You are trying to argue that a measure of balance in one and one objective only is superior to measure of balance in all the other objectives. It is not true on fundamental level. Everything you build on top of that is build on fundamental error, so it doesn't hold very well.

Obviously balance in the game like Malifaux is difficult to measure, but the game does not need perfect balance to be competitive or fun. It needs to measure skill for competition and it needs to provide narrative and imaginative elements, as well as measure of skill, for casual entertainment.

Asymmetric and slightly unbalanced game only helps in that, especially if it actually takes skill to build and run a crew which tilts the balance in one's favor (say what you want, but there are no auto-win crews in Malifaux. At the very least you need to learn how to use your combos properly and then you need to know how to shield them from interference).

Edited August 2, 2011 by Q'iq'el