Hard to Wound and the Red Joker

[graeme27uk]

Isn't this a bit of a contradictory ruling?

Flipping more cards means you are more likely to draw the Red Joker even on a negative flip, taking that card, causing more damage, etc...

Would it not be simple to fix this by just saying that on a negative flip you have to always take the lowest card even if one of them is the Red Joker. Just as you have to take the Black Joker.

[roboshmoo]

Simpler yes, but not nearly as fun, and the whole point of the red and black jokers are the they mess with the odds.

[Fetid Strumpet]

There was a very lengthy and extensive series of posts on this very topic a number of months back.

[graeme27uk]

Sorry, must have missed it. Without trawling, any idea of what it was called? What was the outcome?

[Saint Norton]

Nobody ever complains when my mcmourning has gotten off rotten transplant and then S-29 charges them with his massive fists and flips a black joker on damage...

As long as you can't cheat the red joker on a negative twist I have no problem with it being used as it is currently.

[sephiroa]

Nobody ever complains when my mcmourning has gotten off rotten transplant and then S-29 charges them with his massive fists and flips a black joker on damage...

As long as you can't cheat the red joker on a negative twist I have no problem with it being used as it is currently.

+1 to that

[Fetid Strumpet]

There was no official word, because the rules are what they are, which does allow you to use the Red on a negative twist. The two camps tended to be,

People who disliked the fact that the Red Joker, somewhat oddly, made models abilities such as H2W2 less survivable. This position tended to be favored by those who played Ressers alot. There was no general agreement on how to fix, or even if this needed fixing. This camp mainly just very much disliked that a defensive ability could often be responsible for killing a model faster than otherwise.

The other camp tended to agree that the nature of the game was the nature of the game and that the Red Joker's randomness = Fun. Additionally their position often was that those that complained of the Red Joker's effect on model survivability was influenced by negative reinforcement. That is that the times when it was responsible for a models death just stuck in the memory more often than the times when it helped reduce the amount of wounds a model took. This camp was generally filled by people who didn't play ressers a great deal, although there were some well known resser players who took this side as well. The general consensus of this camp was that nothing needed fixing and the mechanics were sound.

[graeme27uk]

Hm, so like one could have guessed, really there was no concensus. I'm not a resser player, just looking at the game mechanics. It does seem odd that a defensive ability makes you potentially more likely to suffer worse. I don't think that was the rules as intended, otherwise there would be something similar for the Black Joker surely?

Would it really make the game less fun? You would still have randomness and you would still have the fact that Jokers can cause havoc, either way.

[Ozz]

Something similar for the black joker? A positive flip? great sword + Charge = double positive, win by lots and triple positive, some spells give extra positive to damage, but black joker is more likely to appear and laugh at you just the same, although the great sword is less common than the H2W but it is still there

---------- Post added at 11:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:26 PM ----------

Also it increases chance of the black joker so you take no damage at all from the attack on both sides

[Fetid Strumpet]

The argument however was made that you couldn't really compare the black to the red in such a binary manner.

The argument went that the most common form of dmg flip in the game is for weak dmg, as more often than not an attacking model would not beat the defender's total by 6 or more. That meant that weak dmg was the most common outcome for any given attack.

If you accept that premise the black joker equated to no more than a missed attack, which again is fairly common in the game, or if we figure dmg, one missed instance of weak dmg.

Assuming the above statement was true, the Red Joker contributes a greater swing in the game than the black, as dmg from the red often equals three successful hits or more in terms of pure dmg.

The greater cost/effect of the Jokers on the play of the game was one of the reasons the binary joker argument was weaker, at least in my opinion.

[Tograth]

the problem is that the folks complaining about HTW and the red joker are consistently and repeatedly ignoring the fact that HTW2 also massively increases the chances of weak damage. Moving from HTW to HTW2 gives something like a 15% increase in the likelihood of weak damage (to about 75% iirc), whereas it increases the chances of a red joker by less than 3%.

The red joker isnt an actual issue, more than a perceived issue.

[Q'iq'el]

Hm, so like one could have guessed, really there was no concensus. I'm not a resser player, just looking at the game mechanics. It does seem odd that a defensive ability makes you potentially more likely to suffer worse. I don't think that was the rules as intended, otherwise there would be something similar for the Black Joker surely?

Would it really make the game less fun? You would still have randomness and you would still have the fact that Jokers can cause havoc, either way.

The keywords here are "low impact" and "big eyes". The chances to flip Red or Black Joker are really low. They are further mitigated by ability to hold on to these cards, if you draw them.

Sure, the cards may be flipped several times per game, but there is no telling what they will be flipped for - initiative flips, healing flips, terrain interaction - there are all sorts of flips other than damage flips where the Red or the Black may pop up and go to discard pile till the next turn.

So in the end, very very rarely it happens that your H2W model will die because the card flipped was a Red Joker. It probably is perfectly balanced by the fact just as many attacks fail due to Black Joker.

The (fear has) big eyes part has to do with negative reinforcement Fetid Strumped has posted about. Even though H2W is helping models survive in almost every attack they take, with Red Joker popping up once in a blue moon to ruin the fun, people are so afraid of that one-off event they suddenly start to speak about H2W as a liability. If anything, it is an intended risk in a hugely beneficial ability, not something which makes it a liability.

Now Fetid Strumped has painted it as Rezzers vs. no-Rezzers divide. Personally I think it is predictability vs. gamble divide. In every miniature game there is there are players who absolutely hate the random aspect of things and will conduct lengthy online campaigns to reduce any chance for a nasty surprise, even if it means losing on nice surprises as well. Then there are people who are fine with a bit of unexpected.

I'm in the later group, because I think it is a challenge to improvise and address all the problems arising from my model suddenly failing in such a spectacular way, where I was counting on it to succeed. It is solid fun and it makes for epic games.

I understand that there are players interested in raising their performance in the long run, doing local ladders or following closely their tournament rankings, for whom this sort of meta-game is important enough to want to remove the random from Malifaux. I think they miss the point, but then it is just my subjective view.

Edited June 9, 2012 by Q'iq'el

[Hateful Darkblack]

Ultimately, the Jokers are a disruptive force that gives unexpected results. This is the biggest example of that and it really does make the game more exciting.

[Cats Laughing]

Personally I think it is predictability vs. gamble divide. In every miniature game there is there are players who absolutely hate the random aspect of things and will conduct lengthy online campaigns to reduce any chance for a nasty surprise, even if it means losing on nice surprises as well. Then there are people who are fine with a bit of unexpected.

Reminds me of the "Tough" debate in WarmaHordes. A faction (and several other models scattered through the remaining factions) has an ability that allows killed models to essentially make a save against death on an unmodified d6 roll of 5 or 6 (in some rare occasions 4, 5, or 6). This can happen many times in a row if a player is lucky (extremely lucky for any streaks longer than 3) and can keep them from losing the game due to having their Tough Leader assassinated.

Some people really hate this ability, and usually it seems to relate to games where an opponent just got amazingly lucky and made 4+ Tough rolls (~1% chance of occurrence, or less for streaks longer than 4) for a single model during the complainer's big assassination gambit, then the complainer lost the game due to failing the assassination run. There are also people who play the related faction who complain about the ability, because they feel they pay too many points for an ability that is random and suffer in other stats because of this defensive ability.

This seems to similarly fall into the random vs not random divide.

I think the appropriate response to people asking about the benefit/disadvantage of Hard to Wound is the same one I give for Tough. It is a general benefit to have this as it typically makes your models harder to kill. However don't rely on it. And in the case of Hard to Wound, occasionally it can bite you in the behind.

If you're truly worried about the Red Joker, you can attempt to negate the effects of Hard to Wound 2 by cheating down your defense/resist flip to attempt to limit the number of :-fates your opponent gets. I personally think it's better to just get the additional s to keep your opponent from cheating and increase your changes of weak damage or the black joker, and just live with the rare occasions where the red joker pops up.

[Sandwich]

And just to provide a fluffy reinforcement to my current stance of "Keep it as is."

Just because Seamus is HtW2 doesn't mean you can't hit him square in the eyeball now and again.