Levi

[Grizzlebeez]

Nice post Setoth.

I think this is perfect message to communicate what is wanted and also the state of the game in regards to levi.

[Trevelyan]

Lots of fun discussion about our favourite pervy old man.

I feel that I should point out that I never suggested or intended to imply that Levi was an advanged master or that the tactics required to beat him should involve clever trickery which only experienced players can handle. I draw a distinction between "good" and "experienced" (nand equally between "bad" and "inexperienced").

A good Malifaux player is one who recognises that VPs are the win condition and that killing the opposing crew varies between one method of winning among many and a complete distraction. I won a lot more games of Malifau in 1E/1.5E than I lost and in a lot of those cases it wasn't a case of me skillfully outplaying the opposition, but rather the opposition deciding to get into some grudge match and target my crew while leaving me free to skip about and score VPs.

Beating Levi should take as much skill as beating any other master. But recognising that Malifaux has never had an assassination victory option, and that M2E downplays the value of straight out killing the opposition even more than the first edition should be a prerequisite for having your views in the beta taken seriously. The game should be balanced around the ability to score VPs.

Being immortal doesn't directly help Levi score if he does nothing with it, and doesn't prevent the opposition from scoring either. It isn't the major balance isue that some people seem to think it is. What mattes is how much Levi can accomplish each turn while he lives. If Levi lives but wastes his entire time summoning minions which can't achieve much then Levi doesn't score and looses the game. The trick isn't to kill Levi but to neuter him.

That said...

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...

I agree on the theme, but the caveat there is that Levi's entire crew tends towards low level entropic damage which doesn't necessariy result in enemy kills. Without any other obvious means of manipulating markers, etc (see the sort of stuff the Lucius can pull these days) killing targets (not necessarily masters) Levi needs to be able to remove a model or two per turn to prevent the enemy blitzing the VPs before they die.