Levi

[glshade]

Hey, anyone playing Leveticus for 2ed... As a Levi player I would love to know how the new version plays.... I would love to playtest him...

[WindlordRyu]

He got forced back to the drawing table so he technically isn't in 2E yet. And the way he played changed a lot at several points in the beta.

[Big Ned]

This is true.

He was one of the masters I was using during the first wave of playtest and the way he played seemed to change quite a bit week to week (the soulless trigger being a prime example.)

He'll be getting ironed out in the 2nd round of playtest.

Princibly he's stayed much the same as his 1.5 interation as far as the death/reborth thing works but it's MUCH more straightforward now. and there's lt less resource management with his wounds to worry worry about.

[Iron Heel]

I am very curious to see what they did with him and was surprised that they pulled him. It makes me wonder if they decided to go a very different direction with him as I felt his last Beta incarnation was much smoother than earlier on.

[Darksied]

I had some issues with him during the playtest. Not for being OP or to complicated, but that in an effort to "smooth him out" he lost a lot of his interesting play style. I understand the change they made to eternal, but I like many people have griped about on these forums found that that effort to balance him had some profoundly stupid effects. I get that he needs to be balanced and his initial version was admittedly STUPID good, but the fact that one bad flip against The Hanged now meant he was permanently shut off and worthless was also stupid. Personally I felt it was worse then when the same thing happened to Bete Noir or Bad Juju because not only did he depend on the bury/heal mechanic to function, but he's also a master-centric crew and so shutting him off often meant an immediate loss. I know that if you kill said hanged or avoided him you could stop it, but just seemed to random to fall apart that suddenly. I'm hoping in the revamp they find a way to keep his unique play style with out making him way to good or way to worthless; though I'm not getting my hopes up. Such is the hazard of making a master as fundamentally different as Levi.

---------- Post added at 05:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:03 AM ----------

And I do hope that this lesson holds true for Hamlin, who I fear being either broken or awful for similar reasons. Just have to wait and see, no sense worrying about it now.

[Dracomax]

Honestly, in the first round, he vacilated back and forth between "boring and annoying" and "utterly broken"

He had at one point an autokill ability that wasn't difficult to get off, the ability to chain debuff and then do massive pulse damage, and generally summon so many models by killing his own that it made Ramos uneasy.

Yet fixing the problems only either made him only playable with OP tactics, or only really work with one set not very flexible set of tactics that wasn't all that fun. In addition, the ability to hire Constructs and the ability to hire undead were on separate, mutually exclusive upgrades, that didn't provide a whole lot of benefit, and honestly, there wasn't a great deal of benefit in bringing anything but his core crew anyway. While they had him balanced to a decent point by the end, i had absolutely no interest in him by that point. He wasn't fun to play, he wasn't fun to play against.

It was absolutely for the best they pulled him and took him back to the drawing board.

Edited October 3, 2013 by Dracomax

[Sonova]

In beta he was easily the master that would make people quit Malifaux. How do you stop a model that

a) literally does not die

can all but guarantee a kill on almost any model with a pretty hard to resist spell

c) can punch things he cant for 12 with pretty alarming regularity.

The most you can do is slow him down and hope you accomplish your schemes before he tables you.

[Dracomax]

A)He could be killed. It was about as difficult as in M1E.

Changed multiple times, and was only usable against minions and peons if you are talking about the sacrifice spell. If you are talking about the waif interactions, yeah it was a problem. so trying to fix it, they made it a worse problem.

C)seriously? I found that getting max damage(or even getting into range for the attack) was a lot more difficult than it sounds. Honestly, Lady J could deal that damage more consistently.

The big problem wasn't these. they really weren't as bad as they sound. The problem was that in order to make him work at all, you had to spam these techniques and put the waifs right on the front lines, meaning that the same techniques were incredibly difficult to defend against.

i.e. the problem was that the synergy between the crew was too good, and trying to fix it with large changes always resulted in unexpected effects simply because the synergy made it propagate to every model. Realistically, the big threat from the crew was the multiple pulse damage from the abominations with the aura from the waifs. It was never the massive damage/instant death stuff, because those took so much time and effort to set up, or killed at most one model per turn, that they really aren't any worse than what any other crew could bring.

It was the Pandora-like thousand papercuts attacks that could stretch across half the board that made it a pain. Trying to blame the core Levi mechanic(not being killable) just because people hadn't figured out how to counter it or that they should ignore it, or his ability to reduce single models to death in a turn just miss the point and the problem entirely.

[Claymore65]

To be fair about the Hanged thing (and I may be wrong) they changed it to

Pariah's Soul: When this model is killed

or sacrificed, it is not killed or sacrificed.

Remove all Conditions, heal all damage on

this model, and then Bury it instead.

This made it so the Hanged can't destroy his key ability. Looking at Bete Noire, it says Heal-all damage then remove conditions, so maybe the Hanged can still "auto-kill" her? Either way, if the last playtest is any indication (which it might not be) the Hanged can't completely mess Leveticus up. I agree he needed some work. He personally wasn't too OP later in the beta in my opinion, but the Steam(punk) abominations / Hollow Waifs definitely needed work. It's probably for the best that he get some tweaks.

[Sonova]

A)He could be killed. It was about as difficult as in M1E.

Actually he was Dreamer level difficult to kill. Yes it was possible. But you had to kill so much stuff that it wasnt really a practical outcome unless the Levi player made massive mistakes over multiple turns.

Having Alice as a backstop shackler was massive when you could fill your list with Aboms or Desperate Mercs. You have to time your kills of Levi and his waifs so fine AND make sure none of your stuff got reshackled by the waifs (before the cuddles), just to keep him off the front lines. Projecting enough force to wipe Levi, the 2 waifs, Alice and whatever else she has on emergency shackle is not really a realistic consideration unless its very late in the game.

Edited October 5, 2013 by Sonova

[Trevelyan]

I wrote pages on why Levi wasn't working in the last round of playtesting. As a long term Levi player I was pleased to discover that Wyrd recognised he still needed a lot of work and are taking the time to get it right.

If he hasn't progressed from the last version we saw in the last couple of months then I'll be disappointed. But the real problem was that Wyrd wasted a lot of time listening to the wrong people in the first wave of playtests - when the Levi players are telling you that something is broken beyond redemption and the Levi opponents are insisting that it only needs a slight tweak then you don't waste three weeks of a six week playtest trying to tweak it, you remove it and start dealing with the other issues that the Levi players are concerned about.

The final playtest verison of Levi was a lot more viable than the original version, but still had a lot of issues. I'm not going to rehash them all here unless there has been no more progress (in which case it'll be worth raising them again as part of the playtest feedback).

EDIT: Anyone complaining that they can't easily kill Levi is a prime example of the sort of feedback that can be safely ignored. Levi has always been hard to kill in the hands of a good player, but a good opponent should realise that killing Levi isn't the goal. M2E is even more focused on scoring VPs than M1E was, and killing Levi is a distraction from that. The problems with Levi in the last playtest revolved around the summoning balance, the distribution of core abilities over cards and the fact that the Wiafs didn't seem to know what their role was. Among other things.

Edited October 7, 2013 by Trevelyan

[Mason]

EDIT: Anyone complaining that they can't easily kill Levi is a prime example of the sort of feedback that can be safely ignored. Levi has always been hard to kill in the hands of a good player, but a good opponent should realise that killing Levi isn't the goal.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your points about Leveticus, but I think that disqualifying people because they're not "good" players is a bad idea. If you have to be "good" to get any traction against a certain master, then we're back to the 1st edition scenario of someone getting interested in a game, sitting down against someone playing Hamelin or the Dreamer, getting wrecked, and then just deciding that the game is stupid and quitting. And maybe turning off other people who ask their opinion of the game.

One of the main goals of M2E has been to make the game more accessible to new players, and thus far it's done a great job of doing that. I totally understand what you're saying, and to some extent I agree, but I think we should be mindful of excluding people's opinions just because they didn't play Leveticus in 1st edition.

*ahem*

But yes, Leveticus went back and forth quite a bit, so I hope that the final version we end up with is fun for both new and experienced players to play with and against. ^__^

[Dracomax]

EDIT: Anyone complaining that they can't easily kill Levi is a prime example of the sort of feedback that can be safely ignored. Levi has always been hard to kill in the hands of a good player, but a good opponent should realise that killing Levi isn't the goal. M2E is even more focused on scoring VPs than M1E was, and killing Levi is a distraction from that. The problems with Levi in the last playtest revolved around the summoning balance, the distribution of core abilities over cards and the fact that the Wiafs didn't seem to know what their role was. Among other things.

I agree with the entire post, but this part gets :+fate

I will say that I felt that outside of completely redesigning his crew, that small changes were better. This is not because I disagreed with any of the other Levi players, but because his crew in the beta, especially early in the beta, were so synergistic that a small change to one(reducing waif aura range, for instance) changed the entire way the crew worked, and it's impossible to balnce a crew like that in the time we had available if week after week large changes are made.

It also didn't help that when changes were made, especially large changes, they were inevitably made to the things which were the least broken, and generally reduced the options available. What was really frustrating was that they focused the crew more and more towards the strategy that was most OP, and also IMHO most boring, to the point that you almost had to use it to win.

I also think that 90% of the complaints about him were and are worthless. People complained about his ability to take out 1 minion per round with his ability to use them as shackle targets, so that was gotten rid of. Never mind that he had to die for that to work, and most masters can do so, some just as easily. Okay, fine. then they complained about the one thing that didn't change at all about him from M1E, that he is difficult to kill, and if you waste your time trying to do so, you are playing against him wrong. They complained that soulless was too powerful, when it honestly was fairly difficult almost impossible to use consistently. That changed, and for the better, I admit. and all the time, the broken waifs(who did so much they really shouldn't be insignificant or low cost any more) got ignored by anyone not playing Levi.

In short, the people complaining wanted Levi to be exactly like the other masters, when he is not and never was. you both have to play, and to play against Levi differently than other masters. He has always been one of the more advanced masters, and against someone who understands him he is difficult to counter unless you also understand him. If he we try to fit him into that box, it'll not only make the game more boring, it'll make Levi much less interesting.

In the end, they fixed most of the more extreme issues in the last week or two of beta, and then with the guy still not working right and having lost most of the interesting little things that weren't big problems without adding anything else interesting to make him versatile or fun, he needed to be withheld. I honestly, even though I have everything I need to play a Levi crew(with the possible exception of a dozen waifs and as many abominations) did not have any intention of playing Levi any time soon based on the last iteration. It was still broken, but it was boring on top of that.

Here's hoping they really did go back to the drawing board with him. And here's hoping that the construct/undead hiring rule is on one upgrade this time, rather than split between two mutually exclusive ones, while we are at it.

[Fetid Strumpet]

I'll state something that someone else mentioned in another thread some time ago, If a master being their own special snowflake breaks the game, then too bad for them, but they don't get to be their own special snowflake.

Breaking the design pattern of the game to create new and "special" ways to play is at the very Heart of the problems from book 2. Creating basic and "advanced" masters is something I very much hope disappears entirely.

[rancor709]

I'll state something that someone else mentioned in another thread some time ago, If a master being their own special snowflake breaks the game, then too bad for them, but they don't get to be their own special snowflake.

Breaking the design pattern of the game to create new and "special" ways to play is at the very Heart of the problems from book 2. Creating basic and "advanced" masters is something I very much hope disappears entirely.

:+fate:+fate:+fate

couldn't agree more.

[Dracomax]

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your points about Leveticus, but I think that disqualifying people because they're not "good" players is a bad idea. If you have to be "good" to get any traction against a certain master, then we're back to the 1st edition scenario of someone getting interested in a game, sitting down against someone playing Hamelin or the Dreamer, getting wrecked, and then just deciding that the game is stupid and quitting. And maybe turning off other people who ask their opinion of the game.

One of the main goals of M2E has been to make the game more accessible to new players, and thus far it's done a great job of doing that. I totally understand what you're saying, and to some extent I agree, but I think we should be mindful of excluding people's opinions just because they didn't play Leveticus in 1st edition.

*ahem*

But yes, Leveticus went back and forth quite a bit, so I hope that the final version we end up with is fun for both new and experienced players to play with and against. ^__^

I don't disagree, but I do think we need to be wary of taking those same people's concerns as seriously as they were taken, because they expect Levi to work in a way more consistant with the other masters. This problem(and to a certain extent, the complaints) was exactly the same in first edition. Levi was always the master that broke the rules the most. If people are complaining that he is impossible to kill, or that they can't win a battle of attrition against him, then they are missing the point. Those things might need to be tweaked, but as long as we are focusing on them(and from the beginning, no less) because people can't wrap their head around the fact that you have to play differently when dealing with Levi, we aren't making Levi Better. The best that can come from that attention is to make him generic, instead of one of the standout models in the game—and that's ignoring the fact that he was much, much easier to learn in beta than in M1E, due to the loss of his draw mechanic.

If people are posting Batreps that say he is winning 75% of the time(and if at least half of them are people who are known to be good players), then he needs to be looked at. If Levi players are saying "this is broken, this is overpowered" then that needs to be looked at first. And honestly, I think the game should have a couple of masters that are difficult for novices to beat, but relatively easy for experts to beat half the time. It means that the game has enough diversity that novice tactics aren't sufficient for every master, and IMHO, that is a good thing.

[Mason]

I don't disagree, but I do think we need to be wary of taking those same people's concerns as seriously as they were taken, because they expect Levi to work in a way more consistant with the other masters. This problem(and to a certain extent, the complaints) was exactly the same in first edition. Levi was always the master that broke the rules the most.

Maybe my concern is that I don't think that just because he broke the rules the most in first edition, that the same should hold true in second edition.

I won't disparage 1E Leveticus players, as they should certainly have a voice when it comes to how their Master plays in 2E, but by the same token, I don't think that Leveticus should be unique and rules-breaking and special snowflakey just because he was like that in 1E.

The best that can come from that attention is to make him generic, instead of one of the standout models in the game—and that's ignoring the fact that he was much, much easier to learn in beta than in M1E, due to the loss of his draw mechanic.

See, that's the disconnect right there.

I don't think that Leveticus should be one of the standout models of the game. I think that his power level should be on par with the other masters; no more powerful, and no less powerful.

And honestly, I think the game should have a couple of masters that are difficult for novices to beat, but relatively easy for experts to beat half the time. It means that the game has enough diversity that novice tactics aren't sufficient for every master, and IMHO, that is a good thing.

I disagree. I think that each master should have diverse tactics, sure, and it's great when you learn some new trick that your crew can pull off.

But if I'm a new player and I pick up Lynch (just to randomly pick a Master), and my friend that's getting into the game with me picks up Leveticus, well, now we have a problem, because every game I play against my friend, I'm going to get spanked because I don't have the "expert tactics" I need to win.

How many games are the two of us going to play before we decide that the game isn't balanced and go find something more fun to do? I'm betting that it won't be enough to develop those "advanced tactics."

Now let's flip that around. What if Leveticus is such a special snowflake that his player just can't figure out what to do with him, and the matches are one-sided in that manner? Sure, an expert player or a wiki article might help, but not every group has experienced players (especially at the launch of a new edition) and not every playgroup checks the wiki (I'm the only one at my store that does).

So far, the Masters have all been pretty much on the same playing level, and it's been great to see new players pick up a Master and "get" what they're about and what they're trying to do within a game or two. I hope that I'll be able to say the same about Leveticus once he's finished.

There shouldn't be "experts only" Masters.

[Drool_bucket]

I'll state something that someone else mentioned in another thread some time ago, If a master being their own special snowflake breaks the game, then too bad for them, but they don't get to be their own special snowflake.

Breaking the design pattern of the game to create new and "special" ways to play is at the very Heart of the problems from book 2. Creating basic and "advanced" masters is something I very much hope disappears entirely.

Fetid, I usually agree with you 100%, but I think you're off on this one. With so many masters, we need some of them to be "snowflakes" as you put it... or all these choices are pointless and let's have 3-4 Masters in each faction. Problem is, that ends up with us playing 40K (cause most everyone is in power armor) with a deck of cards. I left 40K for that exact reason, variety is important. And having a Collette style master to potential choose from makes Malifaux that much stronger.

Moving on to you second point, I do agree that Book 2 and forward Masters had a definitive power curve issue. But because Kirai played with Spirits isn't what broke her, it was her rules taken in totality that did. Same with Dreamer (Alp Bomb missed combo, which relates very much to W1 Open Beta WaifBomb issue). Even Hamelin wasn't broken because he made use of countless small SS cost models that all ended up as Rats... but because when you took his rules and that of his crew you had a problem.

What I am trying to say (probably ineffectively) is that I don't want to see that Masters out there that "do there own thing" be stripped down into Melee, Ranged or Support Masters of a different color, but keep their "shtick" and not just have their overall power level be too high.

Back on topic, Levi was all about Entropy... as defined by Merriam-Webster as: 2a : the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity. I liked that some of his powers moved away from "I kill one thing every turn" to "I am going to make everything around me slowly die. Kinda like McMourning's Poison.. but with Unmaking. If he has that feel, and Rusty, Waifs and him all have Soulless, I will be a happy M2e Levi player...

---------- Post added at 09:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:25 AM ----------

I don't think that Leveticus should be one of the standout models of the game. I think that his power level should be on par with the other masters; no more powerful, and no less powerful.

There shouldn't be "experts only" Masters.

To your first point:

"Stand Out" in terms of uniqueness of playstyle.. a Master that doesn't die. Not "Stand Out" in terms of power level. Two very different things, one of which is great in my book and the other is bad in I think everyone's...

To your second point (or quotes as I have them)

Levi wasn't an "expert's" Master in 1.5 because of his rules. He was because people kept saying he was. He was my second Master but I know a few guys that started with him.... all he required was a willingness to read his rules as they happened....

[Dracomax]

I'll state something that someone else mentioned in another thread some time ago, If a master being their own special snowflake breaks the game, then too bad for them, but they don't get to be their own special snowflake.

Breaking the design pattern of the game to create new and "special" ways to play is at the very Heart of the problems from book 2. Creating basic and "advanced" masters is something I very much hope disappears entirely.

You know what? I was going to disagree with this, but I really don't, entirely. The key here is the phrase "breaks the game." I strongly disagree that masters should not break the pattern of the game, and depending on what your definition of advanced is, I disagree entirely with the idea that "advanced" masters should disappear entirely.

Not only do I thin that every master breaks the flow of the game in some way(what next, summoning is bad because it lest you have more SS worth of models than you hired?), but I firmly believe that enforcing a rigid box not only decreases design space

but makes the game more boring. I think everything should be balanced, but having crews that take different tactics to beat(as opposed to different crew composition—if you have to bring a distinct crew to compete with a master at all, then that master needs to change) is a good thing. If require a completely different set of tactics without requiring a completely different crew means that the master is advance, then bring on the advanced masters. If all the masters are the same with only cosmetic differences, I could play chess for a lot less effort and money.

In short, as long as it isn't game breaking, I'm all for masters that are different and require a paradigm shift. There are more likely to be more masters I am interested in playing, and playing against that way. I am against poorly balanced masters, or masters that require specific models or compositions of crew to even be even with.

and for the record, the exact same strategy that is required to win against Beta1 Levi works against most other crews—block him from getting VP, and get your own. It's just that the strategy most people use to get it—kill the enemy before they can do anything—doesn't work well against him. Maybe people should consider finding other ways than killing in a game that was designed around not having to kill the enemy to win? Beta1Levi was broken, but it was because he was different and broke the paradigm. it was because he and his crew had synergies and abilities that were OP. Making him more "standard" would not have fixed him, and fixing him does not require bringing him in line with other play styles. I'm not saying that breaking the paradigm is not something that can be game breaking, either—just that it isn't inherently game breaking.

---------- Post added at 08:43 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:29 AM ----------

@mindshred: I could not disagree with you more if you held a gun to my head. Not, I am not saying that "advanced " models should exist in the sense that they require an encyclopaedic knowledge of the game and the correct choice of models and years of experience to beat. I am saying that they should exist in the sense that they require changing your tacts to beat. Novices usually pick one set of tactics and go with it for a long time, gradually picking up new tricks and tactics. A master that is as easy to beat, but requires different tactics is a good thing, but most Novices will have trouble with it.

That is good. It's not like resources don't exist to tell them what tactics to use. If they give up because they are too stubborn to look for help or try something different, then building a game around them is not going to be a winning proposition—they'll quit the first time they go up against experienced opponents, too.

I don't think beta1 Levi was all that difficult to learn to play. he was a bit more difficult to play against, but that was almost entirely down to preconceptions. If people played the VP game, rather than the "kill 'em all" game, they tended to win in the same proportions, even with the OP abilities. The Batreps supported this time and time again. If that is too advanced for you, then I don't want to play the same game as you, because the game you want to play? It doesn't interest me.

[Fetid Strumpet]

I disagree, because if you create that dual standard, then the entirety of the "basic" masters function is to be the box that the "advanced" master breaks out of. EVERY master should require different tactics to beat. EVERY master should be as unique and different, within the confines of the system, and previously designed masters as possible. Kirai, Colette, and the Dreamer were broken and seriously strong for several reasons, and the big one was that they took crew synergy WAY beyond what was common for the vast majority of the book 1 masters. Making "advanced" play styles, for specific masters but not ALL masters is a big problem and again should never, ever, under any circumstance happen.

We had the opportunity in wave one to make the game what we felt it should be, and while we are never all going to agree on specifics, those masters are now what the game in general should look like from now on. That level of synergy with crews, no more, no less. That level of trickiness, that level of mobility, that level of survivability, that level of deadliness. The very instant that we create masters that break the mold from the first wave is the very instant that this game is going to start down the path of needing a 3rd edition shortly thereafter.

I'm not saying that there cannot be variance in how masters achieve their ends, that is a given, but it needs to be within the average of what was created for wave 1, or else all you are using wave 1 for is the "boring" masters, and now you can create the good ones.

[Dracomax]

We had the opportunity in wave one to make the game what we felt it should be, and while we are never all going to agree on specifics, those masters are now what the game in general should look like from now on. That level of synergy with crews, no more, no less. That level of trickiness, that level of mobility, that level of survivability, that level of deadliness. The very instant that we create masters that break the mold from the first wave is the very instant that this game is going to start down the path of needing a 3rd edition shortly thereafter.

Not only do I disagree with this, but it is flat out wrong.

Unless you were part of the design team, and in the first private betas, you did not have the opportunity to create the box. at best, you had the opportunity to tweak it. Nor do I think that saying that the current extremes are as far as you should go is either smart, nor sane. Saying what exists now should be able to compete on an even field—that is something I can agree with, but saying nothing should be more mobile, trickier, etc.? that's just stupid. NOt only does it make everything incredibly generic(and given the fact that mostly the masters and models released thus far were more generic) but it reduces the design space in terrible way, and will end with having a bunch of masters who are functionally the same. I suppose that's good news for those of us who already have models—we don't have to buy any more models. it is not good for the game, and it enforces an arbitrary balance that does nothing to enhance the game.

Honestly, given how bland some of the masters in wave one are, even though I like M2E, making that the boundary for models will drive me to play M1E. Pandering to novices is not the same thing as making a game novice friendly, and I can only pray that Wyrd understands the difference.

[Fetid Strumpet]

So you are arguing that the first wave is essentially going to be the basic boring masters that are going to get forgotten about, and overshadowed as soon as new masters come out? That is the argument I see you advancing. And yes, we did have the opportunity during the Beta to make all the masters as interesting as we wanted, as we as the community, collectively, decided what level we were comfortable accepting. If we had collectively stated that the complex and extreme powered levi was actually where we wanted EVERY master to be at, then Wyrd I'm certain would have done their best to make it so.

So we are just going to have to see how Wyrd proceeds once all the open beta wave testing for the second wave is done. When they are released officially, I personally hope we don't have the wave one being the comparatively boring and underpowered master, and wave two being the exciting, powerful masters, because if that happens, all we've done is recreated the exact same issues that plagued Malifaux in the first edition.

[Drool_bucket]

I don't see the Wave 1 Masters as boring or bland at all. And a few got dress-ups like McM and Sonnia, because Poison and Burning didn't even exist when they came out.

Wave 2 Masters (which there are less of) in M2e shouldn't be any "sexier..." Kirai should summon Spirits instead of Undead hookers, etc. Colette should move around faster than anyone else and deflect incoming attacks...

None of them are going to be any more sexy than they already were. It's only power level I worry about. Which is exactly what the Open Beta is for, finding the broken combos before they go to print and observing and finalizing power levels. It's got plenty of other useful side effects, like IDing upsetting mechanics (upgrade removal) or game play (Soulless)....

[Setoth]

So you are arguing that the first wave is essentially going to be the basic boring masters that are going to get forgotten about, and overshadowed as soon as new masters come out? That is the argument I see you advancing.

...

So we are just going to have to see how Wyrd proceeds once all the open beta wave testing for the second wave is done. When they are released officially, I personally hope we don't have the wave one being the comparatively boring and underpowered master, and wave two being the exciting, powerful masters, because if that happens, all we've done is recreated the exact same issues that plagued Malifaux in the first edition.

I read Draco's post less as "W2 masters need to overshadow W1 masters" and more "I don't want W2 masters that are just reskins of W1 masters." The general idea, I think, is that an interesting mechanic like the Levi lifecycle (death cycle? waifcycle? bicycle?), if properly managed and implemented, add diversity and necessitate new tactics without destroying all semblance of balance. And I don't think Levi's life/death mechanics are impossible to balance considering we already have models in W1 that do a variant life/death cycle (Huggy, Bette Noir, Juju, etc).

Drool put it best. The Dreamer in his earliest incarnation would have been considered more broken than Levi was in book 1, but that was because certain rules loop holes (alp bombs) broke the play experience. The key is there was almost nothing a player could have done about alp bombs when initially implemented. Similarly there was nothing stopping a Hamelin player who does the infinite activations loop. In Hamelin's case and in the Dreamer's case, the issue wasn't that the "special snowflake syndrome" made them incompatible with the flow of the game. The rules, as worded, is what broke them and that can be true of a model that is generic and doesn't have extra-special snowflake rules. There's a whole discussion going on now about Ophelia and how her crew are OP mostly because of the damage output. Certainly Ophelia's teleport gun plays a part, but the spread of min 4 damage has gotten a lot of mention.

By contrast, a life/death cycle mechanic that is balanced could be countered with new tactics. Find ways to avoid the Master, sacrifice the master, in Tara's case lock the Master in an alternate dimension, etc. If these tactics can be done with minimal/no changes to crew compositions (ie no specific "this is my anti-Levi crew") then I think it's certainly manageable. And like I mentioned above, we already have powerhouse models that don't really do much of that whole "dying" thing, so I don't think it's unreasonable to make a Master's focus on it. It just requires careful playtesting and balancing.

Edited October 7, 2013 by Setoth

[Dracomax]

I read Draco's post less as "W2 masters need to overshadow W1 masters" and more "I don't want W2 masters that are just reskins of W1 masters." The general idea, I think, is that an interesting mechanic like the Levi lifecycle (death cycle? waifcycle? bicycle?), if properly managed and implemented, add diversity and necessitate new tactics without destroying all semblance of balance. And I don't think Levi's life/death mechanics are impossible to balance considering we already have models in W1 that do a variant life/death cycle (Huggy, Bette Noir, Juju, etc).

THis, more or less.

Not going to lie, though, many of the wave 1 masters do tend more toward the boring (by which I mean tactically simple—they have a few things they do well, and every other tactic is generic based on the board and situation of the game, Lady Justice being a prime example) side, just in what they were intended by design to be. There are a few major exceptions(about 1 in every faction, some have 2) but they have the most standard style. Which is fine. while some of them are boring, others are interesting. but wave one should be the baseline, not the limit. We have 21 masters that are at the baseline. we don't need any more. Every master should deviate from the baseline in some way. This doesn't make the masters that cam before less interesting, especially as they get new models and upgrades. It just means that you have room to move away.

—and keep in mind, I'm not saying that they should be unbalanced. Colette's having movement shenanigans, or SS manipulation didn't make her more powerful, having both and incredible synergy with her crew did. Dreamer being a master in 2 parts who could bury/unbury models didn't make him overpowered. the specific rules that allowed him to do so, and the ways they interacted did. We can balance the rules and models without making the playstyles A, but slightly different. I like that both Sonnia and Ramos exist. I like that in M2E Collette existed, even if I would agree she went a bit too far. what's not to like about a crew that avoids fights and spends time actively pulling you out of position? She probably should have been split up into 2 seperate masters with only half the abilities each, but the fact she deviated from the standard playstyle is not what made people dislike her.

I am not advocating masters that only advanced players can play. I am saying that we shouldn't limit playstyle builds simply because a novice is unlikely to grasp it immediately, or because it is different than what most of the other masters have.

and if we are just going to churn out masters that are "Sonnia, but Arcanist, with a bit more movement" then why bother?