Not turning it up to 11

Envy: the double threat of Gatling-guns
and sinister organ music.

A short post about an idea that's come up a few times under various guises of late, so I thought it would be worth talking about it in more detail.  It connects to a common misconception around what makes a good Malifaux crew.

In most tabletop games you're confronted with a single objective to complete whilst also contesting the field with the enemy. A lot of games are even narrower, consisting solely of killing the enemy.

In the average game of Malifaux however you'll be confronted by a range of objectives you need to complete, whilst also combating the opponents crew.  The creates the need to  range of specialisms in each crew in order to complete each objective effectively.

If you're playing; Turf War, with the Breakthrough and Deliver the Message schemes you're going to need models with very different specialisms to complete the different objectives in front of you.

That is to say a good Malifaux crew needs to balance a range of roles to perform optimally.

This is where I see a common mistake made by a lot of players; they think that because their model/crew does something very well that doing more of it is automatically a good thing to do. In fact most things you can do rapidly peak in effectiveness, and pushing them further becomes highly resource intensive for a diminishing level of gain.


As an example;

A lot of times I see new players with Ramos encouraged to add a Mechanical Rider to the crew for more summoning. Ramos will already efficiently summon two Steam Arachnids a turn on average. Spending more soulstones to boost that by 0.8 models per turn doesn't achieve anything. If you can't win Reconnoiter while summoning 2 models/turn you aren't going to win it by summoning 2.8 models/turn.

Spending those stones in increasing other key areas of the crew; improving objective running and hitting power will be far more effective over the long haul.

I refer to this sort of approach as 'turning it up to 11', and it's bad practice.

A lot of the time the skill here becomes figuring out where you're investing into particular types of activity beyond it's peak in effectiveness. This is something that players learn with experience, but here are a few symptoms of this issue;

1) Spending more than 25ss on your masters core plus things which do the same key thing as your master.

2) Hiring a model just to copy / repeat the same action another model in the crew has.

3) Hiring more than two of any one model (or more three of if it costs 3ss or less).

4) Hiring models you're planning to summon copies of (unless needed to enable the summoning).

There are going to be times where the above things are appropriate, but if you find you're doing them most of the time, then maybe it's time for a rethink.

Anyway, that's my thought on that subject. I'm next in action at the Masters, where I'll be drinking tea and crashing out on day one.


EDIT: I penned (flailed into the keyboard) this post before recently recording with the Arcane Reservoir podcast, so you may hear me make some of the same points on there.

Frozen Pool: Post Mortem

A very quick post-event update from my last blog post; Frozen Pool.

I had a great time at the Troubleshooters event; winning Best Painted, and finishing top as Arcanist in sixth place, out of twenty-four players. Not bad considering 'Tina really doesn't like small games and pools.

All my opponents were great fun to play, and I don't think I've ever laughed as much during a game as did in my final round against Karl.

The venue, Battlefield Hobbies, has only been open a few weeks and is already comfortably the best I've been to in England.  If you get a chance to attend and event there I'd highly recommend it.

On the table the only game I lost was fairly unfavorable to begin with; Pandora in Turf War, with terrain, schemes, and corner deployment basically funneling my whole crew into her auras and pulses. That being said I did make a few errors and my opponent, newcomer Marcus, played very well. He's actually one of the most promising new players I've played in a long time.

Officially though I'm blaming that loss on some fiend stealing my tea before the round and replacing it with coffee, bleh. In other words I was basically poisoned.

Pool wise; The Soulstone Miner and a couple of upgrades probably should be replaced with two mole-men in future otherwise I'm fairly happy with it.

One key piece of feedback I did got on my pool ahead of the event was on the lack of December Acolytes. So I thought I'd address that quickly;

The Acolyte is a great model, significantly ahead of the power curve at it's cost.  The issue I had including it in my pool was firstly that Raspy is enough shooting for a 45ss list, adding much more is almost certainly too much. Secondly 7ss was a difficult amount to fit around the other models I wanted in the list.  Finally in all the situations where I felt I'd want the Acolyte for advanced deployment the Soulstone Miner does the same job for 1ss less.

Note here that I'm only talking about this list/pool.  Acolytes are generally speaking great. My point is this; it's not enough to be great, you must also fit into and serve a purpose in the pool/crew to make the cut. Cassandra is great, but she didn't make it into the list either.

I also wanted to say thanks to the several people came up to me at the event to tell me they enjoyed this blog, and my recent appearance on the Schemes and Stones podcast. Which was really nice of them.  It's great to know some of the things I give my time to the community for are appreciated.

I'll be back soon with some actual content, for now though I'll see y'all breach side. 

Frozen Pool

Somewhat at the last minute I'll be scratching my tournament itch by attending the Troubleshooters event in Daventry next weekend.  The event is unusual as we will be playing 45ss games with a fixed master, hiring from a pool of 70ss.

I'll be playing the event with Rasputina, as she's the master I'm most practised with at the moment. Not the best choice for limited pool or small games, but it's better to play something you're practised with than pick up something you're rusty with.

I thought I'd write up a quick post to go through the pool of models I've selected to join her, and how I went about choosing these. Hopefully this will be useful playing in pool events.

Step One:  Pool Rules

First thing to get right are the rules. Most sets of rules for model pools are slightly different, so understanding how you need to build your pool is the first step to building it.  The rules for this event are as follows;

• Pool needs to be 70ss, including upgrades.
• You pay for each upgrade in your pool separately, so if I want to use two copies of imbued energies then I need to pay for two copies of the upgrade (2ss).
• Models which are summoned don't come from your pool.
• No running, no bombing, no heavy petting...

This makes any summoning, especially flexible summoning good.  Smaller games also favor summoners, so at this point I should change my mind and play Ramos, but I'm sticking to the plan.

It's also worth noting we have no info on Strategies and Schemes ahead of the event.

Step Two:  Core Crew

Given this is a fixed master event, and the pool size is lower than two complete crews we know that some models will probably wind up in every crew I play during the event. Most masters work with a fairly standard core of a crew and upgrades they'll normally take almost regardless of the objectives. So I'm going to start my pool by blocking that core out (blue in the list below)

As it's very easy to fill out a pool list full of great models, then find you can't combine them to make good crews my next step is to write a single generic 45ss list. This gives me a core I'd be happy playing in some, but not all situations;

Happy new year

This is going to be obligatory end of year post.

Having taken a break from competitive Malifaux for around six months in the middle of the year, and with family commitments keeping me from playing in the nationals, I was pleased to hang on to my results and qualify for Masters on my own merits. My enthusiasm for the competitive game is back with a vengeance now though and I'm already scheming my approach to the 2016 season.  

The game is growing in the UK, which is good. While we're suffering the growing pains of any expanding game I'm please to see how well the community as a whole is handling it.  We've a lot to be proud of, but the price of safety is vigilance, and we need to be swift to handle any issues that do arise over the coming year.

My new year's resolution is to replace all the existing Malifaux metals in my case with their new plastic M2e versions by the end of the year (assuming the model's available in plastic). In addition to this, as ever, I'm looking to qualify for the 2016 UK Masters. This will probably mean finishing the year in the top 15 ranked players, a task I've achieved every year so far, but one made more difficult each year by our expanding scene and the rising quality of play.  That's a nice problem to have though.

I've not had the time I've wanted to blog this year.  So I'm going to have a bit of a rethink about what I use this space for.  I'm probably going to aim to just blog when I feel I've real content to add, not just for the sake of updating regularly. My regular hobby and general thoughts can be found on my twitter feed, if you seriously want to cyber-stalk me.

That said I do have couple of posts in mind, so watch this space. I think that's it from me for now though. So it just remains for me to wish you all happy new year, and I'll see you breach-side.

- mythicFOX

Snow in September II

Just a very quick odds and ends post to close out my Snow in September challenge, which is probably as well, given it's now over a week into October.

I've had a lot of fun painting up the crew, choosing to paint a Snow Storm rather than an Ice Golem at this stage. I also chose to use the M1.5 Wendigo over the M2e version, just because I like the little fellow;

My new Cult of December crew

A few weekends back, painted crew in hand, I made a run up to the North East for four rounds of ‘Faux in Middlesbrough.

I had a great time playing them on the day, they're quite different to the crews I normally use.  Had I not previously committed myself to using Rasputina in three of the four rounds I’m fairly confident I could have made the podium, as it is I finished seventh of twenty-four on two wins and two draws.

I’ve still a lot to learn about the Cult of December. I made a couple of key errors without which I could have won at least one if not both of my two draws. I definitely need more table time with them. That said I did complete my challenge, winning my third round game with the cult.

My cult crew also won me a VASSAL game which was uploaded to YouTube by my opponent, you can watch it here. (It's not in English but you can enable subtitles.)

Overall I'm starting to feel more competent at the table again, my instincts are coming back and my scheme selection has been much more on point recently.  I'll be getting some more practice in this weekend as I drive the team South to Norfolk tonight for the Malifolk event tomorrow.

Wish me luck,  I'll need it. :)

Announcing Schemes Before Events

I mentioned in a previous post that I favour announcing schemes in advance of an event, and following recent discussions on social media I thought I'd expand on why.

The current default for events in the UK is to only provide strategy and deployment in advance and scheme pool on the day of the event.  I'd like to see this change, so that the default is to announce the entire scenario in advance (barring terrain and opposing faction for obvious reasons).

To my mind there are three advantages to doing this;

Time Saving
Tournaments are often pushed for time and fitting enough rounds of Malifaux into a day is a tricky thing.  Providing; strategy, schemes and deployment ahead of time would allow players to be better prepared, and shave some time off crew selection each round. It will help more games get to turn five.

Fewer non-Games
Malifaux is at times a game of mistakes. I've lost count of the number of games my opponents have lost during scheme selection. I always think this is a bit of a shame, and it's certainly not fun for either player. By giving players the opportunity to think about games in advance and avoid auto-lose pitfalls it means we'll have more games where one player hasn't lost before the deployment flip.

More interesting crews
Discussing the tactics with friends and tinkering with lists is fun in itself. Right now thinking on the fly players more often than not play it safe and stick to the same options every time. Giving objective sets in advance gives players more opportunity to play with ideas and come up with more interesting builds.  This will make games more diverse and raise the standard of play.


So what're the arguments against announcing schemes in advance? Two are commonly deployed;

Crew selection 'on the fly' is an important skill
Tournament games are time limited as a practicality, not because the game itself demands they be timed. Where possible the game should be about players making the best decisions they can, not testing their reaction times.

That said even with this proposal in place players will still need to react to the terrain and opposing faction. So even if this is a skill we want in the game, it's not invalidated by this change. Skilled players can still use their experience to react and build to take advantage of terrain and opposition.

Time to prepare makes it too easy for experienced players
The truth is with ten minutes or ten days to prepare experienced players are far more likely to build a better crew and pick the right schemes than a new player.  I suspect any advantage veterans did gain will be more than offset by the games they won't auto-win in early rounds because a new player didn't see how a particular scheme interaction would work given five minutes prep time.


TLDR:  I think this change would enable more tournament games to play the full five turns, raise the standard of play at all levels of the game, and lead to more interesting and fun games overall.

I'm aware a number of prominent people disagree with me on this. I want to be clear that I very much respect these people and their opinions. I'm perfectly capable of getting along with people I disagree with.

Corner Case: Gunsmiths and Acolytes

I'm looking at shelving some of the models I have in my case as I think I'm carrying a little too much dead weight at the moment. With many crew selection options available to us I've always held that it's better to play fewer models you're more familiar with than to hire marginally better choices you don't know how to use.

So I'll be penning a few short articles like this to look quickly at a couple of models, summarise my thoughts on them, and ultimately decide if they'll be staying in my case or not.

December Acolyte
The Acolyte is a 7ss ranged hitting minion. It's harpoon gun has a respectable damage track which also automatically both hands out Slow and forces the opponent to discard a card. Your opponent doesn't want to get harpooned too often.

This would probably be enough to guarantee it a spot in a lot of crews, but there's more! It has From the Shadows, making it's deployment more flexible, and it has a (1) action (no flips required) to put up an aura which strips Armour and Hard to Wound.  This pushes it up to the point where it's right to the top of the power curve.


Gunsmith

The Gunsmith is also a 7ss hitting minion, with both ranged and melee capabilities. It has a plethora of interesting traits; it can ignore most common defensive abilities and gain Fast.

All of its abilities require suits or other conditions to enable them, making it resource intensive to utilize for more than just it's base damage flip. This brings it's damage track sharply into focus, and at 2/3/4 makes it look very lacklustre. For a damage dealer it doesn't actually do much damage on average.

Verdict

Malifaux is primarily a game of resource management, so always evaluate what models asks for in terms of resources to work effectively. The above are expensive minions, and given this I'd expect them to do work in my crews without significant additional investment.

You can invest resources in buffing any model to the point it'll do something, but it's normally much better to just hire a model that works effectively out of the gate. There are also plenty of good 7ss choices I haven't talked about here; trapper, Johan, and The Firestarter.

With that in mind the resource hungry Gunsmith is out, the self sufficient Acolyte stays in.