Neverborn Rules Discussion

[nix]

Nilus, you and I are going to agree extremely rarely. I've come to terms with that.

Sonnia replaces the ability to deal reliable damage for the ability to hand out burning tokens. I don't consider that a fair trade. Her one truly useful damaging spell is also a 0 and requires a 10 or higher to cast. Just... Not something I'm terribly frightened of.

I have to back Nilus up on this one. I would be interested to hear your opinion after playing a half dozen games vs someone who has figured out aSonnia. It will take 3-5 games for a regular Sonnia player to figure out her Avatar, but then I foresee people being a bit cautious of her. Her damage spell may have dropped to a 0, but her Pyres, reach, and melee weapon should not be overlooked. Add in Fire Gamin to add more burning tokens and things get kind of scary.

[Justin]

Dude, there was one person who said anything about balance in book three and that was mostly about pointing out a trend. No one else said anything else of consequence about book 3 (Karn said something, I replied to him - neither of the posts was saying that book 3 is broken or anything like that).

Please stop trying to make silly strawmen and paint all of your opposition with a big brush only because it suits your argument (or here, apparently, your sense of superiority or something like that as there doesn't seem to be a real argument there) - it doesn't reflect well on you.

You're right.

There is no argument here.

So labeling it a straw man, really just...yeah.

Sense of superiority? No, I wouldn't call it that either. Really just sadness at what this is degenerating into.

More than anything, I was trying to prevent this from becoming a giant debate about a book nobody has even played with. Now, read all of the posts in this thread between my last one and this one, and tell me that wasn't in danger of happening.

[Ratty]

BTW I don't agree with the layout of the poll.

If you think that Neverborn are overall about the same level as every other faction, but think a small selection of interactions need a tweek you have two options. Either you say

• Neverborn are slightly better then the other factions (with a few broken interactions)
  
• Neverborn are equal to the other factions
  

Which means you end up with a split vote as people can't choose what they actually mean.

[Fading Memory]

I seem to have greatly shifted the content of this forum as I was the first (I think) to bring up other factions and some of their nifty tricks, and pages later other factions are still being brought up. Someone said there is always a post about a faction being over powered. When I first started playing, I thought Guild was over powered becasue of the auto Critical Strike. Then I learned how to play with my models and how they worked together, and I no longer think. Guild are over powered. People will always fight over something in this game. There has to be a winner and has to be a looser.

It's attitudes that create the inbalance.

As for the Neverborn getting all the effigies right away, it would be really dumb of Wyrd to just release a couple of effigies at a time. Wyrd knows what they are doing when releasing models. They know they can't just put everything in one book and say have at it people. They have to realse them in the fashion they see best for the company, and the players. When all the models are out for this game, then we can have a discussion on "Who is more over powered?" But I feel it will be just like this one.

Dolomyte, you still haven't commented on my Lady Justice tactic. :bored:

[Dolomyte]

I'm driving home from the lgs now. Waiting at KFC for my double down. Hoping no one in ghetto philly murders me. I'm gonna look at it.

I did the best I could with the poll ratty. We will do with the results what we can

[psychocamel]

I did the best I could with the poll ratty. We will do with the results what we can

Phrases like that are always worrying. Poll's are often misleading and the statistics are easily warped.

Ratty has already brought up a very good point that already invalidates a lot of potential conclusions one could attempt to draw.

[nilus]

Nilus, you and I are going to agree extremely rarely. I've come to terms with that.

You know my wife said the same thing to me last week

Like Nix said, ASonnia is a bit of a puzzle box. Its takes a few games to see all the coolness she has inside. Her play style does change quite a bit which can throw you off. But if you try a few games with her or vs her and still don't like her. That cool too.

LJ is a tougher nut to crack and to be honest I am still trying to figure out how best to use her. She has possibilities but she needs to become very vulnerable early game to Manifest.

[Dolomyte]

Phrases like that are always worrying. Poll's are often misleading and the statistics are easily warped.

Ratty has already brought up a very good point that already invalidates a lot of potential conclusions one could attempt to draw.

Whatever. hindsight is 20/20.

Create your poll, it does not matter anymore. I completely understand why games workshop shut down their forums.

[Dolomyte]

@ Fading Memory : you my good man, get the last comment out of me for this thread.

However, bringing up other factions is a great counter argument to what Neverborn can do. Showing that other factions have access to "over powered" models and tactics shows balance. Its the "well you can do this, but I can do this" and that is hard to argue against.

That is a valid point, the issue that people have tried and failed to limit the discussion to, at least for me, is that certain issues exist within the mechanics of the neverborn that while possibly are working as intended, require you to take a very specialized list to counter. The problem with that is that A. You should not know you are going to be facing one of those lists. and B. the counter lists typically are not very effective at lists that dont use that particular douchebag interaction.

Take Lady Justice. She casts her (0) spell and gets Fate. She kills a model and gets Inspiring Sword play. Then take a Death Marshal near death and Pine box her near the end of the turn. Next turn kill the Death Marshal. LJ pops out, she casts her (0) again and add Onslaught to the list of effects on her. That's 11+ Cb and she hasn't even drawn the card for the duel or added a soul stone. And with Onslaught she really will onslaught your models.

I think this is a really clever idea with lady justice, and I would laugh when someone did it against me. its using an interesting mechanic to do something tricky and fun.

the reason that I am ok with this as opposed to the nekima / lelitu thing (for example) is that ..

A. Lady J kills one of her own models, even if its a 2 point desperate merc, it requires you to have a death marshall near death who can pine box her, who then can get close enough to my force for her to reappear within threat range, all without me being able to stop it. Also, when said death marshall dies, Lady Justice does not activate immediately, as the opposing player I get a full action (possible a couple with companion) to off lady J before she rapes my face. The Nekima Lelitu issue is a spell with an 18 inch range that casts on a 4+ and ALWAYS triggers its ability to recast. You also could be facing two nekima who can activate simultainiously making you deal with six original cast attempts + whatever number of automatically triggered recasts. Its not unbeatable, but you need to take a specific list to try and stop it.

And let's not forget good old near impossible to kill Colette Du Bois. That's an automatic two points with the Bodyguard Scheme. Then there are the Stratagies she will most likely win: Contain Power, Distract and Slaughter.

In Slaughter, Stiched Together denies an opponent 5ss but Colette denies 10ss. Which one has the clear advantage?

And before you say it, yes you can take three of them in scraps. However, your opponent can cheat Gamble Your Life, and kill it with your spell. That means taking 3 in a Slaughter game is very risky, as you can easily loose you models, leaving your opponent with all his AP to kill the other models that you rely on to do the rest of the dirty work.

Colette is very hard to kill, I wont deny that, you probably havent had the fortune of meeting von schill with a pet librarian yet, he is equally hard to kill. Leveticus and Hamelin also can keep coming back near indefinitely. But you can kill them, and you can do so without taking a list specifically meant to do so. The same goes with colette.

Humerously I just became aware of, thanks to lalo and your gremlins, the fact that the mannequin can activate all the showgirls simultaineously. I dont know why I assumed it was only one, and only the performers, but I just figured it was. I have never played it that way, but on paper, it seems a bit too highpowered for my tastes. I'll give it a shot and if I think its a problem I will add it to my list of things I would love to have looked at.

@ Everyone Else.

This thread, these posts, by myself and alot of other people were not done to try and harm malifaux. I believe that all of us really enjoy the game, and we want to see it better. Alot of us are tournament players, and I think that might be why there is some disconnect. I wish when we made threads and posts trying to discuss rules that we think are unfair, or overpowered, or underpowered, the forum would not immediately attack us as if we were personally attacking wyrd and kicking your dogs. Q wants our discussion to have solid spelled out facts and examples of every interation so that the empiracal data lines up perfectly. I can't give you that data. If we can show you one example, just one of something not working right. that should be enough to warrant a discussion. right now that does not appear to be the case, so I'm not going to participate any further in this thread, its turned as horribly ugly as avatar marcus. (I think im finally past that now, with this final shot.)

[Fetid Strumpet]

Actually in regards to this a question that has occurred to me is this, if those of use who think that Neverborn are overpowered (Not I repeat, NOT broken) how do we go about backing up that claim to general satisfaction of the community? There really isn't anyway is there? We cannot use statistics because statistics can be presented or interpreted in a variety of different ways. We cannot look at tournament results or faction representation because we then get into the argument over whether or not that faction representation is because Neverborn are good or just cool. I just don't know.

For my part I feel that Neverborn are THE faction to play if you are a Tournament player that only cares about winning. I think it is the design philosophy behind the faction with its emphasis on movement & synergy comes out ahead in the way the game is currently won or lost. I've posted on this before, and I don't think this is intentional on the part of Wyrd to make Neverborn the "best". I just think it is a by-product of their design philosophy.

Oh, as a side note, could someone explain to me why Neverborn players continually say that their minions are easy to kill glass cannons? I don't find any of the commonly used NB minions any easier to kill than any other factions minions? Why is this statement brought out in defense of NB balance?

[psychocamel]

Whatever. hindsight is 20/20.

Create your poll, it does not matter anymore. I completely understand why games workshop shut down their forums.

Um, wow... You seem to have a lot of anger atm, all I'm saying is polls (ALL polls) can be misleading. That's it.

[Justin]

Actually in regards to this a question that has occurred to me is this, if those of use who think that Neverborn are overpowered (Not I repeat, NOT broken) how do we go about backing up that claim to general satisfaction of the community? There really isn't anyway is there? We cannot use statistics because statistics can be presented or interpreted in a variety of different ways. We cannot look at tournament results or faction representation because we then get into the argument over whether or not that faction representation is because Neverborn are good or just cool. I just don't know.

For my part I feel that Neverborn are THE faction to play if you are a Tournament player that only cares about winning. I think it is the design philosophy behind the faction with its emphasis on movement & synergy comes out ahead in the way the game is currently won or lost. I've posted on this before, and I don't think this is intentional on the part of Wyrd to make Neverborn the "best". I just think it is a by-product of their design philosophy.

Oh, as a side note, could someone explain to me why Neverborn players continually say that their minions are easy to kill glass cannons? I don't find any of the commonly used NB minions any easier to kill than any other factions minions? Why is this statement brought out in defense of NB balance?

Proving things on the internet is always going to be really hard. In this instance even more so because there just isn't enough data to really make any points.

The best you can hope for is a good debate/discussion, and even that can be hard in a medium where nobody can hear your tone of voice and understand you're not yelling at them or trying to talk down to them. So people sometimes assume the worst, and things get out of hand.

I never saw neverborn moels as all that easy to kill, myself. Honestly, I think mythicfox's latest blog post summarizes the whole thing very well.

[nilus]

The reason some of us dismiss the Neverbon is OP cry that has come up recently is because we have been down this path already. Several times. I think in the 2 years this game has been out there have been movements that claimed every faction is OP except Arcanist(poor Arcanists, no one ever says you are broke. Even with Colette).

And although a lot of the complaints were just complaining there were some valid arguments and I think the Rules Manual and book 2 fixed a lot of book 1 issues. I am hoping that in play we will see Book 3 helping to fix some of the book 2 imbalances as well.

I think the idea of changing models just leads to more complaints(especially changing rarity levels of models people already bought), I'd rather see issues fixed with new models that level the playing field. Whether book 3 has done that is still really up to debate. I don't think anyone has played enough with new models to judge yet.

[Hatchethead]

For my part I feel that Neverborn are THE faction to play if you are a Tournament player that only cares about winning. I think it is the design philosophy behind the faction with its emphasis on movement & synergy comes out ahead in the way the game is currently won or lost. I've posted on this before, and I don't think this is intentional on the part of Wyrd to make Neverborn the "best". I just think it is a by-product of their design philosophy.

I would agree with this, for the most part. An onus on movement is very strong, a notion that seems to be evidenced across all factions. Kirai is seen as the most competitive Resser. She is very movement based. Colette? Plenty of movement shenanigans. Dreamer and Pandora, tons of movement. Collodi, very much the same. It isn't a hard and fast observation, obviously, but the majority of leaders that are viewed to be hyper-competitive have some form of movement-based advantage compared to other crews.

Edited August 25, 2011 by Hatchethead

[edonil]

I would agree with this, for the most part. An onus on movement is very strong, a notion that seems to be evidenced across all factions. Kirai is seen as the most competitive Resser. She is very movement based. Colette? Plenty of movement shenanigans. Dreamer and Pandora, tons of movement. Collodi, very much the same. It isn't a hard and fast observation, obviously, but the majority of leaders that are viewed to be hyper-competitive have some form of movement-based advantage compared to other crews.

You know, that's an interesting observation. And that might be why Neverborn come across as so strong. So many of the objectives, you want to be moving very quickly. And even those where that isn't a requirement, you get a massive advantage for being able to reform and redeploy rapidly.

[nilus]

Oh, as a side note, could someone explain to me why Neverborn players continually say that their minions are easy to kill glass cannons? I don't find any of the commonly used NB minions any easier to kill than any other factions minions? Why is this statement brought out in defense of NB balance?

Neverborn in general don't have armor, how to wound, hard to kill or slow to die. There defenses tend to be higher then average though.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Not getting hit at all is a better defense than mitigating the hit once it is made. I've never bought the argument that Neverborn are glass cannons.

[Uncle]

Neverborn in general don't have armor, how to wound, hard to kill or slow to die. There defenses tend to be higher then average though.

Yes, they drop faster than, say, Ressers. Not faster than a lot of other stuff, though.

And even then, that assumes a game goes on for 6 turns. In timed rounds, being able to hit hard, first, matters far more than being able to take a hit and win the resilience game. Alpha strikes win games in a tournament environment.

[Fading Memory]

And even then, that assumes a game goes on for 6 turns. In timed rounds, being able to hit hard, first, matters far more than being able to take a hit and win the resilience game. Alpha strikes win games in a tournament environment.

I know this isn't viable, but it may sound like tournament play needs to be changed.

I pose the question, should any game be modified to tailor to its tournament players? Companies loose out on casual players as they make up the bulk of its players. They loose their income.

The last game I played that did that, went under. Everyone I know stopped playing because the game just went too out of hand.

[Q'iq'el]

Actually in regards to this a question that has occurred to me is this, if those of use who think that Neverborn are overpowered (Not I repeat, NOT broken) how do we go about backing up that claim to general satisfaction of the community? There really isn't anyway is there? We cannot use statistics because statistics can be presented or interpreted in a variety of different ways. We cannot look at tournament results or faction representation because we then get into the argument over whether or not that faction representation is because Neverborn are good or just cool. I just don't know.

First of all, statistics are not there. It isn't the matter of them being misrepresented or biased, it's matter of too few games being recorded. If you had 100 tournaments a year all over the world, the results pool would still be too small to be conclusive. Rather than saying the statistics are wrong, we simply have to face the fact that there is no statistic data and there won't be any for quite some time.

I don't know if this over-reliance on statistics comes from popular culture, the media or just goes hand in hand with gamer's natural affinity for math, but statistics are just a tool - most of the time they cannot be used for our purposes (that is determining the actual power of certain factions and minions) because the results are always tainted by external factors (meta game in general, coolness factor which is very intangible, fashion etc. etc.). An example of a useful and valid data would be the number of Lure duels won by Lilitu against typical targets... a pool of X000 duels for each target, let's say. That could be simulated with clever algorithm trying to simulate the different state of the deck and the control hand at different points of the activation phase and the entire game, but that cannot realistically be obtained by the players themselves.

I've posted about this in the Exorsist thread, I believe, where I focused on methodology behind the arguments, but I don't think this is really all that hard task:

1. Present a scenario. Describe movements of both sides step by step through an actual game. Note all the cards played, calculate the probability of every event taking place and the cost in Soulstones, Control Cards and such. Post it in its own thread.

2. Gather the critical input - mostly the suggestions how things could be done to prevent the unfavorable outcome. Calculate the costs of those different tactics and approaches and try to determine their feasibility. Test them out in several games if possible and document these games - just to throw the numbers against a living opponent who would react to your efforts.

3. Compare the conclusions with abilities of other factions/crews to deal with similar problem - again, that's something requiring more or less group effort.

If you can show that an ability of a faction to win a scenario (and winning the scenario in Malifaux is not equal to killing the opponent, but rather to meeting the game objectives despite of your opponent efforts) is considerably lower than other factions, or that certain combo makes it highly unrealistic for opponents to reach their objectives, then you have a valid point. If you can show a huge cost/effect discrepancy that's food for thought too... of course some of this difference may always be the result of conscious design (an offensive ability by definition will aim at inflicting higher cost on the defender than it requires from the attacker, for example)

Oh, as a side note, could someone explain to me why Neverborn players continually say that their minions are easy to kill glass cannons? I don't find any of the commonly used NB minions any easier to kill than any other factions minions? Why is this statement brought out in defense of NB balance?

Because they are all in all easier to kill, if exposed to direct damage. Obviously there are exceptions to this (the masters in particular are far more resilient than their minions, or even the Malifaux average), but both Df and Wp of the NB minions hover around 4, which is sometimes described as the lowest meaningful value in this game.

Rezzers, my other faction, tends to hover between 5 and 7 with WP and 5~9 in Df (especially when boosted by some of their buffs).

Colette's crew (the extent of my experience as Arcanist player) isn't that high on Df or Wounds as the Rezzers, but it has consistently high Wp.

Healing is not prevalent in Neverborn crews. There's some regeneration available and some models heal themselves, but these are still exceptions. Especially if you compare it to a healing faction, the Rezzers, where one has multiple layers of healing and ability to bring back the models with full health on the top of that.

There is almost nothing in terms of damage reduction - Mature Nephilim has Armor 1... no spirits, no Hard to Wound or Hard to Kill to speak of.

The dreaded Alps have not only negligible Df, but 3 Wounds. They can be killed with low damage of some models.

Obviously how easy a model is to kill is a moot point, if the model manifests itself after your activation and removes everyone capable of counter-attacking immediately. This is why I have admitted from the start Alps duel is something that could use getting more resistible.

On the other hand this isn't the problem where setup of the "combo" is resource intensive, consists of multiple duel-chain or is AP intensive and presents opponent with multiple chances to interrupt the combo though, which is why I consider Lilitu+Nekima combo quite all right.

[Jonas Albrecht]

Not getting hit at all is a better defense than mitigating the hit once it is made. I've never bought the argument that Neverborn are glass cannons.

It's something that never really got challenged when it started cropping up, and got parroted until it became "common knowledge".

[Uncle]

First of all' date=' statistics are not there. It isn't the matter of them being misrepresented or biased, it's matter of too few games being recorded. If you had 100 tournaments a year all over the world, the results pool would still be too small to be conclusive. Rather than saying the statistics are wrong, we simply have to face the fact that there is no statistic data and there won't be any for quite some time.[/quote']

Thing is, there's never going to be enough data to make a statistical analysis truly accurate. However, there was a claim that Neverborn was "OP" (or slightly off-kilter, what have you) before Gencon, and Gencon seems to have supported that stance.

This isn't the time to be throwing around "Not enough data! Irrelevant!"

[Q'iq'el]

Thing is, there's never going to be enough data to make a statistical analysis truly accurate. However, there was a claim that Neverborn was "OP" (or slightly off-kilter, what have you) before Gencon, and Gencon seems to have supported that stance.

This is highly arguable. We've seen only some battle reports. We've seen Neverborn were over-represented, but was the % of win proportional to their representation, or did they clear the floor? Was the % of games won by the Neverborn higher than their overall representation?

And even if it was, can you say one tournament is representative to them all?

This isn't the time to be throwing around "Not enough data! Irrelevant!"

Yes it is. Not only it is the most important point to be made, but I also presented a proposition of methodology which isn't based on the data which we can't obtain, but is based on analytic thinking, group effort and sort of cloud-sourced play-testing.

Please, feel free to start contributing to the effort, if you care about balance that much. You can start by criticizing the proposed methodology, finding holes in it and trying to come up with something better - I'll be first to applaud your efforts if we can get this thing going in a more constructive direction.

[Uncle]

This is highly arguable. We've seen only some battle reports. We've seen Neverborn were over-represented' date=' but was the % of win proportional to their representation, or did they clear the floor? Was the % of games won by the Neverborn higher than their overall representation?[/quote']

What we saw was that Neverborn was 1/3 of the player base and 2/3 of the top 10, if memory serves. While that is hardly enough to make a statistical claim, it certainly supports the claim that people are making regarding Neverborn's power level.

Ultimately, however, no amount of data will be enough. Some people will remain unconvinced no matter what happens.

[Q'iq'el]

What we saw was that Neverborn was 1/3 of the player base and 2/3 of the top 10, if memory serves. While that is hardly enough to make a statistical claim, it certainly supports the claim that people are making regarding Neverborn's power level.

Ultimately, however, no amount of data will be enough. Some people will remain unconvinced no matter what happens.

Just like we saw Rankings HQ with solid mixture of all factions in top 10? I'm not saying the tournament isn't a good reason to discuss this now, but it doesn't support any claims at all. It is individual event. It carries no weight.

We have no data with any weight at all. What we have is analytic thinking - since the event has raised some doubts and since there seem to be areas where Neverborn absolutely dominate the playing scene, we should probably engage in analyzing the situation. The methodology has been proposed. After we complete that process and come up with some conclusions (assuming the methodology gains approval of course), the opinion based on these conclusions will carry some weight.

Right now it's emotional reaction to insignificant event. I know it sounds provocative, but that's the reality. You may be the best player in your area or tournament winner in the US or UK (where the game seems to be the strongest), but it still doesn't carry much weight unless you present your observations in some sort of standardized way and allow the public to scrutinize it.

For all we know there may be that small gaming club deep in the Sahara desert where holy monks of the player order reached levels so insane, they laugh at us, knowing in the depth of their hearts there's no minion comparable in its power to a piglet.