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Malifaux Masters coverage


nilus

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I would say Neverborn is overpowered as much as over represented. When you have that many of one faction its no suprise they dominated.

I am suprised how so much has changed. When the game came out Guild was the dominating group, now it seems very few people play them

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I would say Neverborn is overpowered as much as over represented. When you have that many of one faction its no suprise they dominated.

I am suprised how so much has changed. When the game came out Guild was the dominating group, now it seems very few people play them

Are Neverborn and possibly Outcasts over-represented because there's perception they are the top, or perhaps it is the case of tournament players actually choosing the faction that are over-powered?

In other words there may be reason for over-representation and the reason may be real or imagined uberness. Or it may be unrelated to this particular question. Hard to judge without actual reports of the games.

I'd like to see the scores for individual masters though. That'd be interesting and could throw some light on the logic behind the faction choice.

Edited by Q'iq'el
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Are Neverborn and possibly Outcasts over-represented because there's perception they are the top' date=' or perhaps it is the case of tournament players actually choosing the faction that are over-powered?[/quote']

I believe this is the case. In a multi-Master situation, Neverborn have 3 very strong Masters and 1 still above-average Master. It makes them the de facto choice for those who are looking to win.

Guild has 1 strong Master, 2 decent Masters, and 1 below par Master (or I just be among the people who don't get Hoffman).

Ressers have 2 strong Masters and 2 I wouldn't really consider for tournament play.

Arcanists have 1 strong Master, 1 average Master, 1 I wouldn't consider for tournament play, and 1 below par.

Outcasts are just kinda funky. Hamelin is really just that darned strong. ;)

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I believe this is the case. In a multi-Master situation, Neverborn have 3 very strong Masters and 1 still above-average Master. It makes them the de facto choice for those who are looking to win.

You can't say that without seeing the actual reports. It may well be the games were close and the players were lucky. It is partly my point that even if people choose Outcast and Neverborn, it may simply be their perception, not reality.

I'm not saying this is the case. It well may be that the perception is true to the facts. But I'd love for someone to post detailed reports of at least some of the games, so that we can see what really happened.

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Sorry, made a mistake about Nix. Looks like he ended up dropping to 9th after losing his last game on the top two tables.

I'm curious to hear what the reports are out of GenCon. Neverborn was 33% of the field, yes, but they then ended up being 66% of the top 3. There are a lot of variables though - could have been that the better players also happened to be playing Neverborn. In the end, it's a 30 man tournament, so not a huge field to pick from still.

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You can't say that without seeing the actual reports. It may well be the games were close and the players were lucky. It is partly my point that even if people choose Outcast and Neverborn' date=' it may simply be their perception, not reality.[/quote']

Absolutely, and as I mentioned in another thread, a perception of imbalance is as bad, if not worse, than actual imbalance. Either way, it would seem that one of the two is happening.

At the very least, there's certainly a overall tint of "Neverborn are OP" on the boards.

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I don't think avatars were allowed in the tournament.

They were allowed if painted. I don't believe anyone used them in the Masters. Although I know that in the story Encounter Saturday night there was a Kirai and LJ out there(from the twitter feed).

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I would also like to Get some detailed reports on the games.

We have a very young Malifaux group, meaning we've only seriously been playing for a several months now. In our group the guild players are op, we had a 6 person tourney and the top two were guild, the guild players consistently seem to win.

It's interesting to read the comment that the guild use to be op but now that seems to shift to neverborn. I wonder is this because we're "newer" to the game? Curious if that shift will occur in our group.

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I am suprised how so much has changed. When the game came out Guild was the dominating group, now it seems very few people play them

This. I'm not surprised that Neverborn have overshadowed the Guild as the competitive faction of choice ... there is a definite perception that they are at the top of the power curve, though I cannot speak to the reality of it (the results are convincing, but only in a vacuum) ... but I'm a little taken aback that the Guild were the least represented faction at the Masters. Better than 3:1 in favor of Neverborn, I would never have predicted that.

I suppose Guild are the one faction that do not offer a supposed (again, perceived) "OP" finesse Master like Collodi, Dreamer, Pandora, Colette, Hamelin, Kirai. Hrm. Maybe Lucius counts, I dunno, though you don't see many whinge threads about Lucius ...

EDIT: Neverborn have a depth of shenanigans that other factions cannot match, very much like Cryx in WM. Losing to Neverborn is often less about knowing you own crew, more about NOT knowing your opponent's ... though you'd think that would be less of a reality at the Masters.

Edited by Hatchethead
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Was there a fair number of avatars seeing play during this tournament? If so, that might have added to it--Neverborn definitely seemed to get the best choice of avatars in the prerelease.

I think Bunniegodd used Avatar Zoraida in one of his games. I'm not 100% sure on that though. Just had a brief conversation with him last night. I know he ran Dreamer x3, and Zoraida x1 in his 4 games.

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I think it has also a little more to do with philosophy of Design behind the factions.

Guild as a whole have very little direct synergy between their masters and their minions. The guild has a ton of very solid minion choices, which can be mixed and matched between their masters with ease. The guild's masters are, in general, more strait forward to use. The guild also in general has access to more ranged attacks than other factions.

Ressers are, in general, very resilient, and can replace their troops more easily than other factions. There is some synergy between some of the masters and their minions, mainly between Kirai and Seamus. However, their mechanic of being able to summon more minions is inherently potentially unbalancing, and so their options and minions I feel are given an extra hard looking over during design and play testing to prevent any perceived or actual too strong combinations from going through. No one wants a repeat of the Nicodem list which took 10+ canine remains, had all the dogs dig up a Corpse Counter, and then raise them all as mindless zombies. This combo was so unbalancing they had to take the All action to dig up counters away from graverobbers.

The Arcanists to me feel like they lack a focus as to what the faction as a whole does or represents from a design standpoint. They are a conspiracy of rogue magic users, but every faction has magic users. They seem to me to be a smattering of all of the other faction's designs. So we have Ramos, who is almost like a resser with how resilient he is, and the summoning and creation of more minions. Colette is more like a Neverborn master (more on this later) with her synergies, Marcus is the most flexible of the Arcanist masters, but until more beasts are released for him to play with I think he will continue to sit on the shelf, and Tina herself is a slow but very deadly ranged attack Master.

The Outcasts are all over the place, but this is on of their greatest strengths because when you sit down across the table from an Outcast, you have no idea what is going to get thrown at you.

Finally we come to the Neverborn. The Neverborn excel at Control, synergy, and speed. All of their Masters are exceptionally synergistic with their crews, so instead of having alot of individual strong threats, the Neveborn crews work more as machines, where every part is deadly, but used together become even more deadly. I could go on and on about this but I think this is where the perceived or actual power of the Neverborn lies.

I'll return to this topic when I have more time as I need to be somewhere soon. I will say that I do not believe that the Neverborn are broken. I think they are in general a bit stronger than other crews because of their synergies, and their control.

The other factor to consider is that Neverborn are also...well cool. They have nightmares, and monsters, and faery tale creatures, and creatures of legend all mixed up together. From a story perspective they offer a unique twist on very well known tropes from the things that people who gravitate to this market all love, how could that not be a huge draw. None of the other factions really offer this kind unique twist on their members. So in addition to a tend in design philosophy which I think makes the sum greater than the whole of its parts you also have the fact that the Neverborn, outside of game mechanics, probably has a greater draw than the other factions for player base.

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I think FetidStrumpet has it pretty much bang-on in regards to pre-playing draw. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see that Arcanists are the least-played faction (they really don't havea theme going for them) and Neverborn are the most-played.

33% of the field being one faction really isn't that out of the ordinary, either, although I still believe that Neverborn are the no-brainer choice these days. However, 2/3 of the top players having Neverborn is a bit more suspicious.

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