Walking Away from the table... am I the only one that considers this?

[nilus]

I appreciate not attacking me

My point is that somewhere, out there, someone who is smarter then we are might play a game and come up with the ultimate shut down to these combos. It would be a shame if that person just never found it because he heard the Dreamer was unbeatable so he never played against him.

If there is one guy in your group who only plays these unfun list and does it just to win and rub it in. Then by all means stop playing him. But I don't want people who play the dreamer to not have opponents just because of the current trends of the game says he is broken. I had deal with and Perdita for the first year of the game and it sucks.

As for the new Toy box. All we can do it proxy and see what happens. Lots of cool new toys out there to try.

[Mr_Smigs]

As for the new Toy box. All we can do it proxy and see what happens. Lots of cool new toys out there to try.

no offense meant...

but when someone says "well, the problem is, you didn't buy the right models..." it makes a game really hard to promote...

I may be a little old school here, but I've always felt that the first book should set the standard all the others have to live up to...

I've seen alot of players leave games (not just Wargames) because of power-creep because they invested in the first release thinking it had staying power... only to find that wasn't the case...

while I can see the point of playing against an un-fun list with a fun player to work on strategies... as soon as someone starts saying I have to invest more into a game, that's when I start wondering about the game's balance and design intent...

I get it,

the company's job is to make money..... so I can't fault them for wanting to design models that certain player types are encouraged to buy...

but those models just seem to become a flag to me of "this is not the kind of player I enjoy playing with..."

And I know others who've made similar comments about other games... Examples including the Mage Hunter Strike Force, Haley Turtle, and Blightwater in Warmachine/Hordes... or Chaos (certain builds), Ellisian Drop Troops, and Imperial Guard Leaf-Blower in 40k... I've even had people ask me not to run my Cutter in Infinity at under 300 points...

Edited September 16, 2011 by Mr_Smigs

[Necromorph]

I get it,

the company's job is to make money..... so I can't fault them for wanting to design models that certain player types are encouraged to buy...

but those models just seem to become a flag to me of "this is not the kind of player I enjoy playing with..."

And I know others who've made similar comments about other games... Examples including the Mage Hunter Strike Force, Haley Turtle, and Blightwater in Warmachine/Hordes... or Chaos (certain builds), Ellisian Drop Troops, and Imperial Guard Leaf-Blower in 40k... I've even had people ask me not to run my Cutter in Infinity at under 300 points...

Agree on the whole, certain factions/armies making people quit games due to power creep...though I would argue that the cutter isn't that bad, and I don't think Infinity specifically has anything that compares to the Alp Bomb or FILTH lists...but anehoo, that's off topic.

In general, yes, the company is trying to make money and I think it is a little selfish (don't take this as an attack I'm merely stating my opinion on the matter) to say "Well I bought what I like, I shouldn't have to buy anything else to win because I don't want to." The game is designed that way, so that different models are designed to combo with others, especially in Malifaux above most other games. You don't have to use every model, but if you have a specific crew/crews, you might need to buy some more models in order to handle the majority of opponents. Unfortunately, this game isn't designed like others where one balanced list played by a competent person will win you most games.

However....I think that with the Alp Bomb, Hamelin, Dreamer in general, Filth, etc, you do have to buy very specific sets of models and or entire crews just to handle them. Those models might be great against said lists, but might be worth s**t vs others. I don't think it's quite right to have crews that are so hard to counter that you need to go out and buy a whole new set of models just to deal with THAT CREW...since they are a minority and not always seen commonly in most gaming communites. It is another facet of the issue that I think needs to be considered when discussing counters and balance amongst the top teir masters.

[striker8]

Damn that was a mass of reading from start to end of thread.

This whole thing is a people issue whether you want to accept it or not but it is. While there is group of people who picked one of the so not fun to play against without knowing that fact there are ten fold times 10+ chose these for a different reason all together. These people are the ones who chose their desire to win above anyone elses enjoyment of the game. The people in the first group unfortunatley get lumped in with the second but they should be able to show and explain to people they aren't trying to suck the fun out of the game.

You really can't blame the designers since there are people out there who do play these supposed bad crews and masters with their opponents in consideration. I've had enjoyable games against both The Dreamer and Pandora being played by such people. These people understand that while the designers may have slipped up some playing the game takes at least two people so they don't do things just because they can and self regulate if need be. On the other side of the coin you have those so focused on picking what wins, and claiming that they can because the designers put it in they ruin it for others. You see how it's a people issue?

Those arguing that people just need get a counter force and/or learn how to deal with these few masters and crews need to take a step back and think a bit. While on the surface it sounds great, not everyone has the time or inclination to put that much effort into a game when the issue is just with a few people. The same can be said for buying mini's to counter these crews/players why buy mini's you don't particularly like that you'll only use rarely for a few trouble makers. This wouldn't be an issue if people would self regulate would it?

In days past gamers policed their own, the ones making it not fun and enjoyable were told to stop and if that failed eventually changed their ways or they moved on since no one would play them. Now it seems people are afraid to do this but it worked in the past and still works today you just need to exercise your right to say no to a game if it will not be enjoyable to you to play. See people can help correct the problem

[nilus]

no offense meant...

but when someone says "well, the problem is, you didn't buy the right models..." it makes a game really hard to promote...

If one or two new models makes takes the dreamer list from unbearable to play to fun again for you then maybe its worth the investment.

You can't expect to stand here and say I bought XYZ models and I want them to always be balanced with every other model forever and ever. Wargames just don't work that way.

I am just trying to help. What ever you play is just not working and you don't want to play Dreamer anymore. I don't like the idea of anyone not wanting to play Malifaux for any reason(The chip they implanted in my head when I became a henchman causes headaches anytime that happens). So I am just throwing out ideas.

[Ciaran]

In days past gamers policed their own, the ones making it not fun and enjoyable were told to stop and if that failed eventually changed their ways or they moved on since no one would play them. Now it seems people are afraid to do this but it worked in the past and still works today you just need to exercise your right to say no to a game if it will not be enjoyable to you to play. See people can help correct the problem

It still happens. It's less about "you played this" than "you were a jackass about this." At least, that's how it is at the store I frequent.

[Adanedhel]

I disagree with a lot of the wall of text, and will jump in in defence of Pandora

This is why we can look at CCGs for at least a little inspiration on what is very powerful in engine driven games, which in my opinion is what malifaux is. The most powerful things in CCGs? Speed and Control. From my perspective these are the things that over all the CCG's that I've played have ALWAYS been the most powerful tools available to the players, and these are the always most prone to letting unintentional power through playtesting.

Let's look at why this is.

Both Speed and Control are means to an end, not an end in themselves. For example Necropunks or Silurids are insanely fast, and this can be of massive use, if put to use. Speed is al good but it comes at a cost in SS, so if you don't know how to use the speed to gain advantage, you waste potential. Compare chess, where there is a kind of opening called a gambit where you sacrifice material in exchange for an advantage in tempi. You must use this advantage offensively and put pressure on your opponent, for otherwise he' eventually going to catch up leaving you just down the material. Necropunks are good at grabbing objectives because they're so fast, or serving as a delivery system for Killjoy or Bete Noir, but in a slaughter or Contain Power this amounts to nothing. But I disagree that defence cannot win, it's just that defence is more suited to slower models, because the cost for speed is wasted amongst them. It depends on the schemes doesn't it? An Outcast with Gather Soulstones and Soulless Life (for Leveticus) or Bodyguard, combined with a strategy like Slaughter and defence suddenly becomes very viable, since you ca

First Speed. If you can accomplish what you are trying to do very fast you achieve multiple strategic objectives. Firstly, and I think most importantly, you take the initiative. Defense does not win. Defense is a zero-sum strategy. You cannot hope to win if you cannot go on the offense, at best you can hope for a stalemate. So if you can come at your opponent faster than he can come at you you achieve several things. Firstly it allows you to chose the field of engagement. If your assets are fast enough you can examine the situation and more those assets into the position where they will be able to achieve the most good, to hit him in the weakest spot possible with the strongest force possible at that point. This forces your opponent to lose tempo and because of this forces him to react/I] to you. This also has the almost paradoxical consequence of giving you more time.

Malifaux is a game of resources, and one of the most important resources in the game is activations. From the very beginning of the game you have a finite number of total actions you can do, limited by the amount of models you bring and by the amount of actions they have. Therefore anything in the game that allows it to use the most efficient use of those actions becomes incredibly strong. This is why abilities that give slow and paralyze, especially if they deliver those states in addition to something else, are so very powerful. It is also why death, the earlier you can inflict it on an opposing model, is exponentially better the earlier you can inflict it. If I kill your model on turn two I am depriving you of all that model's unused actions for the rest of the game, and the earlier in the game that is, the better it is. Examples we can look at for efficient killing are Chompy and the Ikiryo.

Firstly both are Melee experts so right from the start they bring extra resources to the game in terms of a possible (6) extra melee attacks per game above the "standard" model. Next they almost never have to use any of their own actions getting into position or maneuvering into position to spend actions on their intended function, which is to kill things. Their threat range in both cases is enormous, so they will almost never be limited by being forced to make the choice between attacking a sub-optimal target or doing nothing. It can happen, but usually doesn't. So their attacks often do deliver significant advantage above and beyond a model who is awesome in combat but can't get into the best position all the time. I'm far more scared of the Ikiryo than I am of a flesh construct, and the reason is while the flesh construct has the potential for much higher dmg than the ikiryo, he can only project that power in a very limited sphere. He has to get to a target worth taking out, and then expend resources doing so, once he has done that the process starts over, and if there are objectives to achieve outside of just killing things he now needs to spend resources to get there. Which means that anything which is slow in this game is exponentially sub-optimal than something that is fast. The faster you are the more YOU choose when and if you engage, and how you will do so.

If you have a crew of melee monsters who can get to a point to deliver their force swiftly you will have more activations to efficiently use those actions to do what they were meant to do, kill models, which once dead give you time to spend your remaining activations on fulfilling any non-combat objectives. So what can we take from this. Speed DIRECTLY contributes to victory.

Second Control: First of all, and I think most important concepts to understand for the long term prospects of any gaming company is this, Control mechanics are a razor-sharp double edged sword. In my experience players LOVE to be able to inflict control on their opponents, this is not a universal rule, but it is true about 90% of the time in my estimates. Conversely, No one likes to have control exercised on them! No one. Ever. It is not fun to be unable to use your assets, or have your choices in how to use those assets restricted. Now in some cases a limited amount of control is beneficial to the game, as long as it is available equally to all players. The issue comes in when you give too much control over to one element of the game. Case in point by going back to examining CCGs, in this case the color Blue in magic.

Blue in magic was the color of control mechanics, it was the one that had counterspells, and resource manipulation. It effectively shut down whatever your opponent was trying to do, and more efficiently utilized it's own resources to achieve it's ends. It might not have had the most powerful direct dmg spells, or the fiercest creatures, but what it did have it utilized better than any other color did. When you played against blue what you did was severly hampered, so you would often waste tempo and resources in achieving very little results proportionate to what you put into it.

So if you can dictate how your opponent can use his assets, as well as if he can use those assets you have a more significant advantage then the statistics on your own assets would otherwise indicate. The biggest example of a control master in the game? Pandora. Pandora firstly has a massive advantage in that she is an extreme mix of Speed and Passive and active control. That is what she does, and is the reason why even though I think she's in the running for the best master in the game I will without doubt call her the most UNFUN master in the game to play against. (See there is that no one likes to be controlled thing rearing its head)

Pandora exemplifies why too much control in one place is exceptionally bad design. First of all her passive control abilities. The worst offender of all is The Box Opens. This ability to me, in its current form, is the most egregious example of shoddy design in the whole game. It gives too much for too little. The Box Opens states that all models within 12" of Pandora loose any immunities to WP duels. Just by existing in the game Pandora radiates an approximately 25" Diameter circle where any abillites or talents you might have paid SS points for in the cost of models brought to the game is completely ignored, and Pandora doesn't have to expend a single resource or effort to achieve this. She just has to exist. Now I know the argument that would come next is "Well she needs that Talent to work. She'd be underpowered if she didn't have it.". To those who hold this viewpoint I sympathize with why you believe this but my response is this: You are flat out wrong. Pandora doesn't need that ability to function. If her design intent was to make her solely dependent on Wp duels to succeed then she should be granted some form of ability to punch through WP duels, wether on her, her totem, or a minion designed to go with her, but she didn't need that ability. It is as powerful as it is because it requires her to expend nothing and doesn't require her to be used at any particular point in the tempo of the game. That is a massively strong example of passive control. She expends no resources of her own, and strips your assets of effectiveness.

Added to that is her ability of Expose Fears. This is a remarkably efficient use of passive control. As we all know in order to even go after Pandora with an ability you have to win a Wp > Wp duel with her, with no range limits, to even be able to target her. This sets up a duel which becomes a point of failure in your attack scheme, and she doesn't have to expend any resources to use it. A similar, and in my opinion better, example of this kind of ability would be Pitiful which was a Book 2 innovation. Pitiful states that if the model hasn't activated this turn you must win a Wp > Wp duel to target them. This is a much better design example of control, because it costs you something to use. It costs you tempo because if you wish to remain under its aegis you must activate later in the turn, or use one of your limited pool of actions to reactivate it during your turn. So Expose Fears is better than Pitiful but we can accept that, but, and here we see how synergy makes the whole greater than the sum of it's parts, it isn't operating in a vacuum. It combos with two other abilities inherent on Pandora. The first is Fading Memory which states that every time you win a Wp duel with Pandora she gets to push 4". Think about it carefully, because this ability is a perfect example of the blend between speed and control. Speed because Pandora will be tossing out Wp duels willy nilly and everytime she wins she gets free movement. This works great in an offensive sense, which wins games, but also in a control defensive way as well. In order to attack Pandora you have to target her with a Wp duel and if you lose your attack will not only miss, but now she will be in a different position. She very well could now be out of the range of what ever you were trying to do to her which means that in order to continue to project force onto her you have to spend even more action point resources getting back into range. What did she spend,... nothing. Couple this with her Emotional Trauma ability and you have not only given her a free move, wasted your resource, will have to spend additional resources to attack her again, and to top it off you take dmg, draining another resource from your pool. A perfect storm of minor abilities adding up to be greater than the sum of her parts.

But that's just her passive control. Her active control is just as bad, but as it is late and I've already constructed the great wall of text I'll leave that for another discussion.

The point I'm making is that if you have a crew that directly synergies with the other parts of the crew, and if those synergies make an engine greater than the sum of it's parts, you are going to have every advantage in the game of Malifaux. Currently there aren't that many Masters in the game that offer that, and those that do are a significant cut above their peers.

[Adanedhel]

I disagree with a lot of the wall of text, and will jump in in defence of Pandora

This is why we can look at CCGs for at least a little inspiration on what is very powerful in engine driven games, which in my opinion is what malifaux is. The most powerful things in CCGs? Speed and Control. From my perspective these are the things that over all the CCG's that I've played have ALWAYS been the most powerful tools available to the players, and these are the always most prone to letting unintentional power through playtesting.

Let's look at why this is.

Both Speed and Control are means to an end, not an end in themselves. For example Necropunks or Silurids are insanely fast, and this can be of massive use, if put to use. Speed is al good but it comes at a cost in SS, so if you don't know how to use the speed to gain advantage, you waste potential. Compare chess, where there is a kind of opening called a gambit where you sacrifice material in exchange for an advantage in tempi. You must use this advantage offensively and put pressure on your opponent, for otherwise he' eventually going to catch up leaving you just down the material. Necropunks are good at grabbing objectives because they're so fast, or serving as a delivery system for Killjoy or Bete Noir, but in a slaughter or Contain Power this amounts to nothing. But I disagree that defence cannot win, it's just that defence is more suited to slower models, because the cost for speed is wasted amongst them. It depends on the schemes doesn't it? An Outcast with Gather Soulstones and Soulless Life (for Leveticus) or Bodyguard, combined with a strategy like Slaughter and defence suddenly becomes very viable, since you can just sit it out and get VP based on you holding out, even better if your oponent chose breakthrough, since you keep within your deployment zone he will have problems outnumbering you there.

Wether to go on defence, or offense dependfs on schemes/strategies/crews, and if I would play a doglist with McMourning, or a Levi avatar rush (and face it, the importance of riders in this list means that eery Leviavatar list will be a rush list rahter then a last trumpcard) list in difficult manouvreable terrain, I would just build up my Forces in defence, for not attacking makes me better. Speed can help counter such a list, but wether you should go on offence, or let him come to you massively depends on crews. I like to keep Leveticus back, because a good opponent will try to take out my forward Waif, forcing me to start over from distance every turn. Pandora however I throw inside my opponents crew, Pandora is a very meta master, everyone scared of her so let her enworsen those fears, make them so afraid of dora that they make mistakes, and that's on, of things I love about her, to win wth her, you have to understand how she works, and demoralize your opponent (in a sportmanship matter of course, no need to reallife cast Self-loathing on him/her). But you get my point. Search for what your opponent thinks is the most valuable in his crew and bring it down.

I realise most people don't like GW here around, but Pandora is kinda like the Dark Eldar in playstyle, swift, with lots of tricks to keep her alive (like the Shadowfield) but once you get a blow through she suddenly comes into a very dire predicament. Go twice through Expose Fears a

Second Control: First of all, and I think most important concepts to understand for the long term prospects of any gaming company is this, Control mechanics are a razor-sharp double edged sword. In my experience players LOVE to be able to inflict control on their opponents, this is not a universal rule, but it is true about 90% of the time in my estimates. Conversely, No one likes to have control exercised on them! No one. Ever. It is not fun to be unable to use your assets, or have your choices in how to use those assets restricted. Now in some cases a limited amount of control is beneficial to the game, as long as it is available equally to all players. The issue comes in when you give too much control over to one element of the game. Case in point by going back to examining CCGs, in this case the color Blue in magic.

Blue in magic was the color of control mechanics, it was the one that had counterspells, and resource manipulation. It effectively shut down whatever your opponent was trying to do, and more efficiently utilized it's own resources to achieve it's ends. It might not have had the most powerful direct dmg spells, or the fiercest creatures, but what it did have it utilized better than any other color did. When you played against blue what you did was severly hampered, so you would often waste tempo and resources in achieving very little results proportionate to what you put into it.

So if you can dictate how your opponent can use his assets, as well as if he can use those assets you have a more significant advantage then the statistics on your own assets would otherwise indicate. The biggest example of a control master in the game? Pandora. Pandora firstly has a massive advantage in that she is an extreme mix of Speed and Passive and active control. That is what she does, and is the reason why even though I think she's in the running for the best master in the game I will without doubt call her the most UNFUN master in the game to play against. (See there is that no one likes to be controlled thing rearing its head)

Pandora exemplifies why too much control in one place is exceptionally bad design. First of all her passive control abilities. The worst offender of all is The Box Opens. This ability to me, in its current form, is the most egregious example of shoddy design in the whole game. It gives too much for too little. The Box Opens states that all models within 12" of Pandora loose any immunities to WP duels. Just by existing in the game Pandora radiates an approximately 25" Diameter circle where any abillites or talents you might have paid SS points for in the cost of models brought to the game is completely ignored, and Pandora doesn't have to expend a single resource or effort to achieve this. She just has to exist. Now I know the argument that would come next is "Well she needs that Talent to work. She'd be underpowered if she didn't have it.". To those who hold this viewpoint I sympathize with why you believe this but my response is this: You are flat out wrong. Pandora doesn't need that ability to function. If her design intent was to make her solely dependent on Wp duels to succeed then she should be granted some form of ability to punch through WP duels, wether on her, her totem, or a minion designed to go with her, but she didn't need that ability. It is as powerful as it is because it requires her to expend nothing and doesn't require her to be used at any particular point in the tempo of the game. That is a massively strong example of passive control. She expends no resources of her own, and strips your assets of effectiveness.

Added to that is her ability of Expose Fears. This is a remarkably efficient use of passive control. As we all know in order to even go after Pandora with an ability you have to win a Wp > Wp duel with her, with no range limits, to even be able to target her. This sets up a duel which becomes a point of failure in your attack scheme, and she doesn't have to expend any resources to use it. A similar, and in my opinion better, example of this kind of ability would be Pitiful which was a Book 2 innovation. Pitiful states that if the model hasn't activated this turn you must win a Wp > Wp duel to target them. This is a much better design example of control, because it costs you something to use. It costs you tempo because if you wish to remain under its aegis you must activate later in the turn, or use one of your limited pool of actions to reactivate it during your turn. So Expose Fears is better than Pitiful but we can accept that, but, and here we see how synergy makes the whole greater than the sum of it's parts, it isn't operating in a vacuum. It combos with two other abilities inherent on Pandora. The first is Fading Memory which states that every time you win a Wp duel with Pandora she gets to push 4". Think about it carefully, because this ability is a perfect example of the blend between speed and control. Speed because Pandora will be tossing out Wp duels willy nilly and everytime she wins she gets free movement. This works great in an offensive sense, which wins games, but also in a control defensive way as well. In order to attack Pandora you have to target her with a Wp duel and if you lose your attack will not only miss, but now she will be in a different position. She very well could now be out of the range of what ever you were trying to do to her which means that in order to continue to project force onto her you have to spend even more action point resources getting back into range. What did she spend,... nothing. Couple this with her Emotional Trauma ability and you have not only given her a free move, wasted your resource, will have to spend additional resources to attack her again, and to top it off you take dmg, draining another resource from your pool. A perfect storm of minor abilities adding up to be greater than the sum of her parts.

But that's just her passive control. Her active control is just as bad, but as it is late and I've already constructed the great wall of text I'll leave that for another discussion.

The point I'm making is that if you have a crew that directly synergies with the other parts of the crew, and if those synergies make an engine greater than the sum of it's parts, you are going to have every advantage in the game of Malifaux. Currently there aren't that many Masters in the game that offer that, and those that do are a significant cut above their peers.

[Adanedhel]

Forum has been acting very weird, could a mod please deleten my previous 2 posts?

and my hopefully this time working answer:

Speed and Control are means to an end, not an end in themselves. For example Necropunks or Silurids are insanely fast, and this can be of massive use, if put to use. Speed is al good but it comes at a cost in SS, so if you don't know how to use the speed to gain advantage, you waste potential. Compare chess, where there is a kind of opening called a gambit where you sacrifice material in exchange for an advantage in tempi. You must use this advantage offensively and put pressure on your opponent, for otherwise he' eventually going to catch up leaving you just down the material. Necropunks are good at grabbing objectives because they're so fast, or serving as a delivery system for Killjoy or Bete Noir, but in a slaughter or Contain Power this amounts to nothing. But I disagree that defence cannot win, it's just that defence is more suited to slower models, because the cost for speed is wasted amongst them. It depends on the schemes doesn't it? An Outcast with Gather Soulstones and Soulless Life (for Leveticus) or Bodyguard, combined with a strategy like Slaughter and defence suddenly becomes very viable, since you can just sit it out and get VP based on you holding out, even better if your oponent chose breakthrough, since you keep within your deployment zone he will have problems outnumbering you there.

Wether to go on defence, or offense dependfs on schemes/strategies/crews, and if I would play a doglist with McMourning, or a Levi avatar rush (and face it, the importance of riders in this list means that eery Leviavatar list will be a rush list rahter then a last trumpcard) list in difficult manouvreable terrain, I would just build up my Forces in defence, for not attacking makes me better. Speed can help counter such a list, but wether you should go on offence, or let him come to you massively depends on crews. I like to keep Leveticus back, because a good opponent will try to take out my forward Waif, forcing me to start over from distance every turn. Pandora however I throw inside my opponents crew, Pandora is a very meta master, everyone scared of her so let her enworsen those fears, make them so afraid of dora that they make mistakes, and that's on, of things I love about her, to win wth her, you have to understand how she works, and demoralize your opponent (in a sportmanship matter of course, no need to reallife cast Self-loathing on him/her). But you get my point. Search for what your opponent thinks is the most valuable in his crew and bring it down.

I realise most people don't like GW here around, but Pandora is kinda like the Dark Eldar in playstyle, swift, with lots of tricks to keep her alive (like the Shadowfield) but once you get a blow through she suddenly comes into a very dire predicament. Go twice through Expose Fears and she is dead, if you chose the right minions to do it (no a terror tot or moleman is not going to do the trick )

And let's be fair, the only thing Box Opens really does is stripping away Immune to Influence, so that Pandora can actually target Immune to Influence, who likes it when his master cannot even target your opponents minions? (just remember your last time vs Hamelin the Plagued). Yes it also strips away Morale Duels, but barring the insanely risky Jack Daw/2 Hanged combo, Pandora has very few Morale Duels, outside of terrifying, and immunities to terrifying due to being unliving don't get stripped away, due to that not being an immunity by letter of the rule.

Add that the box opens is a double-edged blade (Every model within 12" loses immunities, not just your opponents, the only exception is Avatar Candy), it's just that dora really likes to wield

this blade, while most other master use it more sparingly.

Just pitting Expose Fears vs Pitifull is very unfair, and I do think you know it; the 2 Pitiful leaders (Kirai and Molly) have got their own other tricks.

They both have Uncontrollable Crying (ie making sure pitifull counts even after they activated) and are Instinctual letting it activate Pitifull again, and still take another (0) action. Give Pandora aces to this, and if she then acts last she can start Inciting fail once, and because nothin's left to activate just start Pacifyin, you really want that more then Expose Fears?

Also Kirai can come back once as a spirit (which gives an extra measure of defence) and has lots of Healing flips. Pandora coming back as a spirit, well yes thank you (I'm not asking for this for the record, just stating that while he is talking about how Pandora's abilities shouldn't be seen as a vacuum, but as a sum greater then their parts he is seeing Pitifull vs Expose Fears in a vacuum while with both other masters pitifull is but one of their defensive mechanisms)

Pandora is Df2 Wd8, Expose Fears really is her one and only defence, because Df2 just screams, hey you can easily get severe vs me if you really try. And Expose Fears does not defend vs blast, pulses or auras so putting the hurt on her isn't half as hard as some people make out. Just be sure you don't need to target her, and she is paper tissue

Control is very powerfull, if it suits your style, but Pandora does have some problems cleaning up models, you can easily incapacitate a couple of models eacht turn, but next turn, they're back adn the you can start all over, Emotional Trauma just gives you that one bit of solid damage doing.

Of her active abilities Self-Loathing is vs the crews I usually face (minus Lilith, where it can be devastating) a joke, Dementia is hard to get off but very usefull, if you first get Project Emotion Pity of.

This is her key spell in my opinion Project Emotions Pity, cause things below the blast (vs a face cheat+SS) are only very rarely capable of resisting, and the makes targetting Pandora very diificult, but she needs to activate before doing it.

I do agree however that of her active abilities one is greatly overpowered, Mental Anguish can really be a gamebreaker.

I felt dirty when I did this to a Lilith in turn one ;$

Even just replacing Mental Anguish with Mental Torture would be an improvement, the model would still be useless a turn, but could defend itself without , and wouldn't need it's next turn to waste 2AP on movement to get back in the fray.

Yes Pandora is really control based, yes some people dislike that.

At the other hand, Pandora will not crush your cool meleeoriented master in one stroke of close compbat (ever seen Leveticus kill Lilith in close combat? It's priceless and everyone I payed against last tourney thought Levi to be heavilly overpowered, while Pandora isn't al that feared here in Belgium )

Everyone has styles which suit him/her better, and I have tried a number of styles (though not meleeorientated, I'm far to much of a keeping my distance type of player, a coward so you will )

All in all Pandora might be though to target

(and in reality though you shouldn't cheat against her spells, but just break her incite pacify chain at the very first opportunity, and take the few models which she couldn't spell out, and burning your hand there to get through Expose Fears, once you're there you're golden) but you'll at least see her, whilesome master (thinkiing Colette and Lilith specifically) can get 5 turns of play without you being able to draw LoS to them once, even when burning all AP on, movement, now that's frustrating, I prefer facing control above noninteractive games actually

IMPORTANT EDIT: I agree that some things went wrong with book 2, the reason for this seems simple enough: things like Lilithu and stuff were meant for all neverborn masters, but Pandora gives them a lot more bang for the buck then to others due to her abilities for Wpduels. While her book 1 minions were pretty much separated, and were actually overcosted for what they would do outside of a Pandora crew, the book 2 minions were for all neverborn masters, and Pandora just gets the best deal out of them.

More or less same reason (but on the opposite side of the UP<->OP debate) why performer/mannequin at 8SS are a total ripoff as mercenary for most but Pandora does seem to get some utility for the cost out of it, because she synergises so nicel with them

On a completely unrelated note: when is Levi finally going to be able to Brawl with Zoraida? I suggest for this match up to just change Pariah (outside of Levi-Z self) to Soulless, Undead, and living with WP<=4

Edited September 17, 2011 by Adanedhel

[Guest]

I have been playing Pandora for over a year now. Still looking for the instant win when I put her on the table. Has not worked at all for me. NOt saying I dont annoy my oppenant, but I work for my wins,

[Akujie]

I play guild, and play against a Pandy player most of the time. He reads the forums and takes tips from the play lists. Pandora as a master is wicked enough, though without a crew she loses any real teeth, and most of her crew options are pretty vulnerable to bullets.

That said, the games where he cheats that 13 crow and flips a face card on the SS to send my master and minion(s) running into the wind, and then repeats it a couple turns can suck real bad, but thats an exception rather then the rule.

Same guy is gonna run dreamer/alp next game we play to see what all the fuss is about.

On to the first comment + feedback.

Walking away: I used to play L5R CCG real competitive, travel to Kotei's and what not, but my core gaming group at home was not the same. So I would have my tourney decks and my play decks, Tourney would rarely be pulled out against casual players because it was not an enjoyable game for them (and thus for me). I dislike any game played where one opponent annihalates the other, but not everyone feels that way. I have played many people that victory = fun, and the greater the victory the greater the fun. (side note to Fetid, most potent CCG ability is card draw , or call it resource gain, the more likely you can get your combos off the better)

Malifaux is kinda the same as a CCG to me as well. You compete on whatever level you are comfortable. You want a starter box and to play other starter boxes, great, should be pretty even. You want to own every character in a faction and play to decemate, then should be pretty even if the opponent approaches with the same mind set. You can't discuss balance issues based on different levels of play, if you are in for a casual game, and you are only ok playing your starter box + a model, you can't say its unbalanced because the guy who owns every model beat you, thats how the company makes money. (i.e Online gaming, the more money you invest into it (buying gold/equip/perks for your toon) the more powerful you are, the more cards you buy in a CCG the better pool of resources at your disposal, and the more mini's you have for malifaux...well you all get it). If your looking for a game to stay balanced as far as resources available and not be a huge investment, you have to buy a dead game (Rage, Spellfire, Necromunda etc.) or go play chess .

That said, the balance issues of I own everything, he owns everything do seem out of wack. If the game is to pick a master according to scheme/strat et all, but i can show up to a tourney with Alp bombs and never change a thing and place in the top 3 with my two best friend Alp bomb players, then you are baiting the question of balance. Is the list unbeatable, I hope not and am maybe to stubborn to believe anything is unbeatable, but it can quickly lead to a rock paper scissors situation (my crew x will tear apart alp bomb, which will be torn up by most other lists, which are torn up by alps). But will add something more in a week after seeing this Alp-pitime of the neverbourn (Pun-Tastic!)