Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Wave 2 Beta: Ten Thunders

So, last Friday the Open Beta ended and the files reverted to internal playtest, prior to being released officially so we can move on to the Avatars. I thought, in lieu of other meaningful content, that I’d do a series of articles passing through the factions' upcoming models, looking closely at the minions and enforcers with an eye to their generic utility for the faction as a whole, shying away from things related to the new masters or which is obviously pointed at facilitating a specific crew. I don't consider myself enough of an expert on any of the new stuff to really speak with any authority on them, so I'll leave that off for the time being. Also, all of this may change in a couple weeks when the files come out, but if past experience is to be believed most of the final internal changes will be more of the fine-tuning variety than major overhauls.Now, given the fact that I thought The Illuminated were just “ok” when I first reviewed them, there’s a very strong possibility I’m flat-out wrong about a lot of this. But this is my blog, and you clicked on it and read it, so frankly I think you share just as much of the blame as I do for spreading this ridiculous misinformation.

You should be ashamed of yourself. 

Wastrels: Introduced as the answer to the 1.5 Guild problem of having no cheap, fast, objective runners, Wastrels were undeniably overtuned because they were designed to fill a void. I liked them quite a lot, and not just because one of their sculpts reminded me of Alex from Clockwork Orange. Unsurprisingly, they couldn’t quite keep the same level of power in 2nd edition. Wastrels now gain Defensive+1 at the end of their activation if all they do is take walk actions. They don’t have their back alley teleportation thing anymore (apparently Seamus stole it) outside of a (2) action that lets you jump to friendly scheme markers. Their gang weapons also no longer gain positive flips, mostly to keep them from being better with McCabe’s sword than he is. Their “Bravado” ability to discard cards and gain suits for their duels (useful for the Castoffs (2) action which gives them various buffs and abilities) is nowhere near as effective outside of McCabe (they get to draw after they discard when they have an upgrade attached) or with Lynch (discard your aces, pick them back up, repeat) but could be useful in certain situations for other crews. I don’t think it was intentional design symmetry with Lynch, particularly since he's already pretty good anyways, but I like it all the same. After all, where else would you expect to find a Wastrel if not in a brothel like the Honeypot?

Chiaki: The faction had condition removal with the Low River monks already, but she packages it with an interesting utility offensive ability to force enemy models to become insignificant for a turn. She has Manipulative and incorporeal to improve her survivability. A solid mid-point value model.

Izamu: The 1.5 terror that was Izamu the Armor obviously couldn’t stay as nuts as he was after a reset, so perhaps it's no surprise that he managed to stay controversial throughout much of the beta process, with threads of malcontents griping about him all the way to the final day. I have to say, I don’t get what people were expecting. He’s tough. He hits hard. He has a self-heal on a (0) action and, if an enemy manages to kill him in melee, he gets a free swing at them, which is as close to “Slow to Die” as any model in M2E has at this point. I know much of the dispute ranged around whether to focus him on being "tanky" versus "hitty," but I think the model landed in a place where it can do both relatively well. What else are you looking for, unless of course it’s just for him to be the no-brainer beatstick he was previously? He’s still good, just not quasi-broken anymore.

Ten Thunders Brother: These are in a weird place, and I’m hoping to see some modifications before they come out. Maybe I’m missing it, but these rules don’t do anything for me. Companion isn’t as good as it used to be, and that was the main purpose for these guys previously. I'm probably underwhelmed due in large part to not liking their (0) action, due to my not generally caring for abilities which you can’t control. Maybe it’s just that I’m a control freak, but I hate being subject to the vagaries of the deck or your control hand to catch suits for an ability that is this situational. Also, I have a minor gripe that they aren’t Last Blossom anymore, which bums me out as it means they no longer have a way to be played in their original faction, the Outcasts.

Mr. Graves and Mr. Tannen-I’ve written about an earlier iteration of them previously. Since then they’ve made some good changes to make them play nicer together and to give Tannen some much better abilities (his objective is to bore the opponent’s models, not the player controlling him). “Show ya the door” makes Graves play kind of like an offensive linemen for your crew, which appeals to me on an instinctual level. Tannen can take a (1) to gain chatty, which I think was a good compromise from the discussion people were engaged in during heavy testing earlier on and improves his utility significantly. I'm looking forward to giving them some more test runs.

Shadow Effigy- Effigies changed a lot during the tests, due in large part to Collodi also undergoing a lot of fluctuation. All of them follow a general scheme of doing something good for the crew and having a powerful (0) that buffs the master. I’m interested in “Remember the Mission” as it lets minions put more scheme markers on the board without spending their own AP. This is useful for completing schemes and also for abilities like the Wastrel and the Tengu that gain mobility off of them.

Lone Swordsman-This guy follows the Ten Thunders tradition of being a stat brick. He can walk 12” or have an 11” threat range off of his charge due to “Walk the Earth” (0) action giving him a 2” push. The “You will not see another sunrise” ability is very high risk/high reward, but I can see it being a game winner under the right circumstances. Also, I just want one so I can paint him to look like Samurai Jack
.
Kamaitachi-Ten Thunders gains a generic totem *applause*. The model should be interesting, as a quick Google search of the name indicates it refers to three weasels blowing in a windstorm, apparently.



Their Howling Thunder ability is probably the thing that is going to raise the most eyebrows, as it effectively lets Ten Thunders models pass Recalled Training back and forth rather than discard them, at the cost of a temporary (in most cases) 2 wounds. One imagines Ototo and, say, Sidir passing it back and forth and being on positive flips for the whole game, presuming you can defend the totem (I imagine he will be a high priority target.) Could be a bit strong, and I know Justin was watching this pretty closely at the end of the testing cycle, so don’t be surprised if this sees some changes. I also like the 0 action for pushing models their walk value, as more movement is always good.

Tengu-Aha, here are the generic objective grabbers we’ve all been clamoring for. These, at first blush, remind me of M1E Night Terrors with their low cost, flight, and teleportation tricks. In a vacuum you can imagine a group of them where one moves forward, drops a marker, and the others jump off of it to gain more movement on round one. Other scheme marking tricksters like the Shadow Effigy could facilitate this further. Toss in some healing abilities and a (0) to discard enemy scheme markers, and you’ve got a pretty solid model for 4 stones. Also, in Japanese folklore they look like Skeksis (or dudes with long noses. Depends on the interpretation.) So you’ve got that to look forward to.

Ansatsu Sha- Oh, Sha. What do you say about this model? It was made Rare 2 partway through the Beta, which should probably give you an idea of how crazy strong they used to be. Ten Thunders gets a sniper model, with the always popular “Focus for longer range” rifles that we’ve come to love in this edition. Also, he has “From the Shadows.” Also, they have a + to attack flips Katana attack. Oh, and Hard to Kill. And if your leader dies in their LoS, they get reactivate. And they can hand out Slow to enemy models with a (0) action. Expect to see lots of these being proxied (if anyone has suggestions, they'd be welcome) once the rules become legal. Apparently Justin doesn’t like their name, though, so that may be different when the final cards are released. Let’s all hope that’s the only thing that changes, as these guys are awesome.

 So these are the models that jumped out at me from the first wave of beta files. Next up is going to be a pass through the Guild, so see you for that one. As usual, comments are welcome and encouraged. 



Monday, January 20, 2014

Mixed Ten Thunders Musing

The UK Masters tournament was this weekend, making it probably the highest level competitive tournament of the M2E era thus far. The UK meta is, reportedly, quite different from the US, but regardless this tournament is probably one of the best pieces of hard data we have on what competitive M2E will ultimately look like (at least for a few more months until Wave 2 comes out, but I digress.) It’s always funny to see what people are afraid will be totally broken during the theory phases of the game versus what actually ends up being strong competitively. These two things tend to only meet up rarely, particularly in a game as intricate and balanced as Malifaux M2E. The Drowned from M1.5 were a great example of this, as I have yet to meet anyone who saw those rules on paper and thought “Yep, that’s a solid model right there.” Personally, I thought they were garbage and filed them with the Latigo Pistolero after my first reading (though I didn’t think Tuco was that great either, so I’m clearly an idiot.) Instead, it turned out that they were a tough, cheap, fast model that the enemy couldn't afford to ignore and punished the enemy harshly for killing them.

This has something to do with the Masters, I promise. Stay with me.

For weeks now on the Bayou Broadcast (http://bayoubroadcast.podbean.com/), Craig Johnson (UKRocky) has slammed the hell out of Ten Thunders. When asked to rank the M2E factions competitively, Craig’s list was effectively “In last, Ten Thunders. Above that, all the others in a tie.” Most of this concern came from the lack of a cheap objective grabbing model in the crew, which is a big deal in the current environment and definitely puts them at a handicap. Every faction in the game can out-activate Ten Thunders if they want to, unless you’re going to take lots of Monks of the Low River, who Craig has openly panned. It’s easy to see why, given that the Monk has no attack actions and doesn’t move that quickly (their function is primarily to remove conditions.) The Torekage (ostensibly the “objective grabber” of the faction due to their ability to walk out of engagement as well as teleport off of other friendly models) is much more expensive than what you can find in other crews. This is a struggle for the faction as a whole and led to Craig’s dismissal of them as a competitive option (at least publicly. Craig is infamous for underselling his own abilities and the abilities of his crews.)

This, of course, leads inevitably to Craig winning the Masters using Ten Thunders Jacob Lynch.

Pictured: Not Craig Johnson.

Now, I’ve already stated how much I love Jacob (http://midwestmalifaux.blogspot.com/2013/09/breaking-lynch.html), and I’d be lying to say I wasn’t gratified to see some of the strengths I was promoting coming to light. As they discussed on today’s Fools Daily (http://malifools.podbean.com/), the obvious reason for his power is the free face-smashy model (pictured above) that you get just as a reward for playing him, while the less obvious power comes from his card advantage and ace-discarding shenanigans. Now that the Neverborn upgrades have been toned down, the choice of faction for Lynch becomes much less of an auto-select than it used to be. I still tend to favor him as Neverborn, but I think Craig has demonstrated pretty effectively that the other side works well. Also, on his twitter feed today he’s mentioned that removal of conditions is a much more important part of the game than he had given credit, so now the much maligned Monk of Low River is beginning to come up a bit in his perception. I myself need to get him (the Monk, not Craig) out onto the field to battle-test them, but I’m pleased to see the success for both the faction in general and Lynch specifically. And, of course, much congratulations to Fat Craig for his victory. I look forward to his humble-bragging about it on the next Bayou Broadcast episode.

So as not to make this just a minifaux post (ooo, I just coined a new term,) I’ll talk about a game I played recently. This is really a re-visiting of an earlier topic (http://midwestmalifaux.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-misaki-switch.html) wherein I discussed Misaki tactics and another post (http://midwestmalifaux.blogspot.com/2013/09/raw-deal-card-access-and-my-concerns.html) wherein I slammed all over Tara for being ugly and bad (still my most popular post to date.) This was of course played over Vassal, as I still live in the Malifaux dessert of Western Virginia. My opponent was Jon, and he wanted to see what he could do with the Nothingness. The best part, of course, is I get to reuse one of my graphics.



Misaki – Defensive Upgrades, Training, 6SS
Yamaziko-Training, Last Blossom Upgrade
3xTorekage
2xRail Worker
1xOiran

Tara-Upgrades of some kind, SSs
Hannah
Hans
Karina
Nothing Beast
3xVoid Wretch

The game was played a couple of weeks ago, so I’ll stick to the highlights and then move on to analysis. I hadn’t played Misaki in a while (as a matter of fact I have played exactly 2 games with Misaki in M2E, coincidentally both versus Tara,) but I decided to put my money where my mouth was and try out my defensive build for the mistress of the Ten Thunders. We were playing Reckoning with a very passive scheme-marker-based pool, so I wanted to try out Oiran for Lure tactics, Rail Workers to get my model count up, and see if I could just plant Misaki in the middle of a quadrant and say “Come on if you think you’re tough enough.” Jon was learning to play Tara and wanted to get the box set on the (virtual) board along with some other stuff he wasn’t familiar with, namely Hannah and Hans. I joked afterwards that Jon loves Killjoy and will bend over backwards to fit him into any list he builds, yet for whatever reason he made the decision not to include Killjoy in the crew that he probably works best with!

Weeeelll, you know what Mike Tyson says about plans, namely that everybody has one till you get punched in the face.  I had protect territory and frame for murder on one of the rail workers for my schemes, and was basically planning on turtleing up with Yamaziko and the Rail Workers in one quadrant and using Misaki to go control somewhere else, with the Torekage’s burying tricks to move them to where they need to be at the end of a turn for control. Since you don't need to prevent your opponent from scoring in M2E Reckoning, all I needed was to control my two quarters and deny him some scheme points and I would be set. And did I mention how smart I felt about the thought of burying my Torekage to move them around the board to control quarters?

Yeah.

Those of you with brains who remembered that I’m playing Tara probably see the flaw in this strategy right away, as the one time I was foolish enough to try it my Torekage emerged back into the field of play with 3 wounds and some burning tokens. Also, Hans was sitting on the other side of the board, picking at anybody who stuck their face out and laughing at my Torekage’s silly smoke bombs. Also, Hannah had shut my Oiran’s Lure down because of her counterspell. Also…ok, look, you get the idea. My plan was dumb. Even the part that did work, the turtle with Yamaziko to prevent charges on my crew, ended up biting me since it meant the Rail Worker didn’t get murdered until we were past where I could get the bonus points for the scheme.

So, knowing that the plan had failed, I changed to aggressive Misaki without the proper upgrades, if only to shut Hans and Tara down. Jon did a fantastic job of saving Hans from me by burying him with Tara, but in doing so left Tara in position to be Assassinated (a weakness for this crew's low hand size that I had noticed when playing her previously.) I was still rather impressed with the Last Blossom related mobility during the game, as much of the Torekage and Oiran’s jobs for the remaining turns became “dash between quarters to avoid the Nothing Beast and ensure we score.” The Nothing Beast (his name must always be capitalized) with movement 7 from an Outcast Upgrade was pretty tough to get away from, but there was no other option since the crew wasn’t tough enough outside of Misaki to deal with him, and she was busy elsewhere.


In the end the game finished up with an 8-9 loss for me. I have a new appreciation for what Tara can do when she is rolling, given that Jon had never touched her before and basically had me beaten from the first turn of the game. I still don’t really LIKE her, as I detest having no hand and being reliant on what the fate deck feels like giving me. But, I am willing to acknowledge that there is much more to her than perhaps I had previously implied. I l look forward with some trepidation to seeing what Jon’s going to do with her, as he had never heard about using Killjoy or *shudder* Bishop in this crew, with Tara functioning almost like an old-school Dreamer that floats around and drops a big bag of pain in the middle of the enemy. 

In the meantime, my impression of the defensive Misaki build was a bit mixed. I don’t think I gave it a very fair shot here, as I basically had to abandon the plan on turn one to prevent Hans picking us apart. It would have been difficult to use in this particular game regardless, as the Nothing Beast and Hannah all have large melee ranges to prevent her dancing away from combat. Moreover, I’m not sure it really fits my play style that well. My natural inclination is to attempt to dictate the terms of the engagement to my opponent rather than sit back and wait for them, but I consider this more of an opportunity than a liability. I need to learn how to play this way for my own benefit, so handcuffing myself into it like this may be a good way of accomplishing that. 

Also, I found this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha). Justin needs to make this for Ten Thunders.

Like, now.