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Golly,
what could we write about this week?
Oh,
right, there was a summer Errata. I’m sure we’re all reeling from the changes
to Burn Out. This is really going to revolutionize how Lynch is played. Forget
about Cheating Bastard, summoning Lynch here we come.
What’s
that? It doesn’t really change anything? People were already playing it that way?
The real changes came to…
Sigh.
Ok. I’ll go get the Wanted Posters again.
***
Apparently
Wyrd decided to claim the Bounties I put out for themselves, as the focus of
the summer errata were Sandeep and Nicodem. Sandeep got the lighter end of it,
as I’m not sure I’ve heard any complaints about his changes other than, maybe,
that more should have been done (and that has been a very, very small minority.)
To quote the man Mason (who appears to be doing much of the design work at the
moment. Is he lead designer now? I don’t know if I’ve heard an official
announcement.) these are the changes:
For two years now, Sandeep has
proven to be incredibly versatile, to the point where he has become something
of a staple at tournaments. By itself that's not a problem, but Sandeep's
effectiveness has pushed other Arcanist masters out of the spotlight, so we'll
be reigning him in a bit.
- Cache reduced to 2. This new
Cache is more reflective of Sandeep's power level.
- Beacon Ca penalty increased to
-2. Sandeep's Beacon is a powerful tool, but his Crew was using it a bit too
efficiently. This should apply a bit more pressure onto Sandeep's Crew when it
comes to hitting the TNs of borrowed Actions.
- Removed Impossible to Wound. This
loss will make Sandeep considerably more fragile and, thus, make positioning
more important for Sandeep and his removal easier for his opponent.
I’m far
from a Sandeep expert, even after having written the previous article, but I think these changes are just the sort of "small adjustments" that I think we all like to see from errata. The
combination of the reduction in cache and loss of Impossible to Wound makes him
a lot more fragile. Deep players will have to keep him a bit Deeper (rimshot)
during games, as a few swings from a beater could add up to a dead master in
relatively short order. Admittedly, no soulstone users are exactly “easy” to
kill in M2E, but being able to cheat damage flips against Sandeep will go a
long way to helping players bring him down. Additionally, the increase in
penalty for Beacon makes bridging his spells out to other models much more
difficult. Path to Salvation is obviously the biggest effect here (as it
already requires a mask, so a reduction of 2 removes one of the 6 cards the
deck could have used to cheat that) but even having the push or the interact
become more likely to require a cheat will increase hand pressure for Sandeep,
potentially bringing his power down a bit and giving some other members of the
faction a chance to shine.
Will
this fix the problem with the Arcanists? The problem, as always stated, was
never that Sandeep was somehow doing something ridiculous that required
dramatic changes, but rather that he did almost everything too well and made
him the “best” choice for most games. There’s always a bit of a stink on
masters that get nerfed, so we’ll most likely see a temporary dip in Deep’s
play for a short time. I know Rasputina has gotten a bit of a rumbling in the “this
master is better than people are giving her credit) direction recently (I know
she’s always given me fits, anyways) and the Max Value crew have been lobbying
for people to use Ramos’ Vox Populi upgrade for the potential to do a silly
amount of hazardous terrain damage with proper positioning. I think the key
thing here is that players who love Sandeep should still be able to do so
(possibly without as much groaning and eye rolling from opponents) but perhaps
of the others will have a chance to outdo him now, particularly in scheme pools
he’s less suited to completing.
So,
since they used such a measured, limited “try it and see” approach with Deep,
we’ll probably see the same thing for Nicodem, right?
***
Oh. Oh,
my. It seems getting killed by Lady Justice really took the wind out of
Nicodem. Let’s let Mason introduce the changes, again.
Nicodem was strong when M2E first
released, and he has only gained in strength since then. His ability to use
Undead models more effectively than other Masters has made him an increasingly
strong choice, to the point where he has started to crowd out other Resurrectionist
Masters and warp the design process. To that end, we will be reigning his power
level in, both on his base card and his most popular upgrade.
- Wounds reduced to 12. This should
make Nicodem a bit more vulnerable to assassination attempts.
- Re-animator now summons Undead in
at one Wound remaining, rather than half their Wounds. This will make his
summoned models more vulnerable and apply pressure on Nicodem by forcing him to
either summon more fragile models or to spend AP healing them with Decay.
Undertaker (Upgrade)
- I Can Use That! now only affects
non-Peon models, and it only functions when they are killed (not sacrificed).
This should prevent the worst of Nicodem's abusive use of this Ability and
bring it back in line with the Upgrade's cost.
- The Patchwork trigger now has
reduced range and healing, which, when combined with Nicodem's Re-animator
changes above, should prevent him from healing up his summoned models quite as
easily.
Yowzer.
That was a bit heavier handed, wasn’t it? I can see why there’s so much salt
flowing from Nico players, as his hits were comparatively much more impactful
than what Deep got…or were they?
Let’s
look closer. First of all, the change to Undertaker’s card drawing needed to
happen, and I’m not going to allow anyone to argue with me on that point (not
that I think many realistic Nicodem players would.) For a bit of historical
context, the first time I heard a version of the card draw engine Nico uses
(Sebastian’s Those are Not Ours on Mindless Zombies) was with a Kirai crew, who
was able to cycle those rotters for cards and stones to power her summons. This
was before Asura came out to make getting the Zombies easier, and it didn’t
have the cards from Undertaker. And the key thing is: it still worked to make Kirai's summons much more reliable. Was it the
kind of draw that Nico gets now? No, but that’s the way it SHOULD be. It should feel like a Rube Goldberg device, not a perfectly greased, flexible machine. The whole
idea behind summoning focused crews is that they have to expend their resources
getting models on the table, potentially leaving themselves vulnerable to
getting hit back. The Undertaker card draw engine was such that he could summon
whatever he wanted at will and then still have more cards in hand than you to
actually kill you with. So, you had a danger trifecta of having more models,
more cards, and more activations than the opponent. That was simply
unsustainable and needed to be changed.
The
change to his wounds number I consider cosmetic. Yes, he’s more vulnerable
to being sniped now, but he still has Impossible to Wound so the opponent has
to brute-force it by weight of attacks rather than through cheating in big
damage. The biggest other change is the combination of his summons coming in on
one wound and reduction in efficacy of Reanimator’s ability to discard extra
corpses to heal the summons when they come in. That one hurts, as Nico
really doesn’t want to be using his AP to heal disposable summons. Part of what
made summoning Punk Zombies so effective was the fact that they have Hard to
Kill, ensuring the opponent has to spend 2 AP to get rid of them (potentially giving
Nico an AP advantage, since he only had to spend one to get the model onto the
board in the first place.) I personally would look to play his summons more
like one-shot “fire and forget” missiles than by using his AP to heal, but
maybe the preponderance of corpse markers the crew can get out could be used to
augment the heals on critical models, or the Malifaux Child could use Decay to
heal. I’m not sure, but it most likely leads to a fundamental shift in the
approach of these crews. One possible upshot of this, however, as it takes the
focus away from Hard to Kill Rezzer minions, who were the preferred summons
previously, and gives some of the other stuff a chance for tabletime. I know
that’s kind of cold-comfort, but seeing something besides Punks Zombies,
Necropunks, and Kentauroi would be a welcome change.
So where
does this leave Nicodem? Well, I think the knee-jerk is going to be to put him
away and get out Kirai. Nerfs tend to have that effect in general, especially
when they’re painful like this one. There’s every chance that Nico will end up
being tossed in the same hole as Summoning Dreamer and forgotten. I think that
would be a shame, though. Nicodem still has the most diversity of summons of
any master in Malifaux. Compare that to the very limited summons Dreamer can do, and Nico is in a much better spot. He can still summon Kentauroi, albeit requiring a bit
more finesse to keep them from dying straight away (though that may not be the
worst thing, either, as it will result in more corpses on the board for
subsequent turns.) He still has the Lampad summoning engine, which operates
independently of the rest of the crew. You can do a stripped down card-cycle
with Asura and Sebastian. Put all of that together, and the comparison to summoning Dreamer seems more and more ridiculous.
So, unlike his in-world counterpart (thanks again,
Lady J), I don’t really think Nicodem is dead. If players give him a chance and
are flexible enough to try some things from outside the old archetype, I think
you can still use him to win games. There’s no doubt, however, that he got a
harder hit than Sandeep, and I would definitely expect to see Rezzer players
looking elsewhere at least in the short term, if only to get the salty taste out of their mouths. That’s
not necessarily awful, either. Those wanting to stick with summoning can still
play Kirai, who is arguably better in some matchups. I know some have mentioned
playing more Reva. Personally, I think it’s criminal that the new and improved
Seamus terror build isn’t seeing more play.
But, I think the biggest reason
this needed to happen was simply this: while Sandeep was just a very good
Malifaux master, Nicodem changed the game into something different. Opponents of Nicodem had to stop playing a normal game and had to either build for a first-turn alpha-strike which
would result in you winning or losing at the top of turn two or had to
sprint for schemes that could be scored in the early turns before you inevitably ended up
getting overwhelmed by turn 4. The test games I played when writing the Wanted
Poster article for Nicodem were one of the few times I looked back after a game
and had to honestly say to myself “I don’t think there’s anything I could have
done differently to win that game. This was over before it started.” So
something absolutely had to be done. Did these go too far? Maybe. But one of
the biggest complaints people have had recently on the competitive scene is
that the meta is stale. This reminds me of the first instance I can remember of
a collectible game’s designers having to step in and use errata on their
product: the Black Summer in Magic the Gathering. To shorten the history lesson
down, this was a period early in MTG wherein a card called Necropotence was so
powerful that, to play competitively, the only realistic choices were to either
play Necropotence decks or to play the specific things that could beat them. M2E’s 2018
season wasn’t that bad (the fact that Deep was good enough to also require
nerfing proves that), but a meta of “Nico or thing that can beat Nico” is going
to naturally lead to stagnation of crew construction. By cutting down the
prevalence of these crews, it frees things up for others to step to the
forefront for a little while. Now, there’s also the possibility that these alpha-strike
lists could potentially have their hands freed to run rampant without a nerf,
and I’ve heard this concern as well, particularly with the Viktorias paired
with Marlena Webster (who just HAS to be on the concern list for January’s
errata.) I don’t know what kind of list Roger Yohn typically runs, but his
victory at TFL with Ten Thunders probably involved some version of fast
Yasunori getting lobbed up the board, as that’s basically in every Ten Thunders
crew at the moment. This is another pretty effective alpha-strike, especially
if Misaki is with it. However, increasing crew diversity also opens the door
for people to learn crews that are more resistant to alpha-strikes. At least in
theory, this should lead to a healthier meta overall. We’ll have to see how it
plays out, I suppose. I, for one, remain hopeful.
Until next time.
So I’m in a crossroads at the
moment. What faction should I play for this last stretch of time in M2E,
heading into the new edition? Probably the most competitively sound choice
would be to stay with the Neverborn for the time being. I know them best. It could
even be a sort of going away party. The combination of crews I have overlap
their strengths in a way that allows them to complement and cover for most
different types of scheme/strat combos. And, there will still be some crews
that interest me left in faction in M3E, at least thematically. I have a
Nekima, of course. I like Pandora and Zoraida. Dreamer's always interested me, though that's as far as I've ever gotten with him. And I was a big advocate for
Titania before she went and broke my faction apart with her civil war. Sigh. I’m
not gonna lie. It’s a little tough to get excited for them at the moment. Maybe
it’s just fatigue from playing them for so long, or maybe it’s looking ahead
and feeling some serious #notmyNeverborn vibes. The fact that I’m writing this
is probably a good indication that it’s time for a change. 
Or do I follow Lynch (my favorite
crew) to the Ten Thunders? Another crew I liked a lot was Lucas McCabe, who
has apparently been fired by the Guild and now works exclusively for the
Thunders. And I have a Misaki crew, plus a few additional odds and ends from
the faction, like a Ten Thunders Brother, Terracotta Warrior, and Monk of the
High River. But that’s literally it. I don’t own half of the masters in the
Thunders and am missing a lot of the key pieces people utilize, like Yasunori
or the Mysterious Emissary. Of course, the new job also means I’ll have greater
ability to actually get these things (hurray for no more paycheck to paycheck),
but it also means more painting time before I’m fully up to speed, which is
problematic for the remaining M2E period. 
