luckgod84
Junior Strategist
Cygnar blogger
Posts: 163 
|
Post by luckgod84 on Nov 24, 2020 18:56:41 GMT
|
|
snoozer
Junior Strategist
Posts: 467
|
Post by snoozer on Nov 26, 2020 12:15:20 GMT
Thanks! I think flank is fine with sir Dreyfuss, the main thing is she gets to have a lot more focus! The other additions will become meaningful in the late game if you brought enough storm knights  |
|
|
|
Post by droopingpuppy on Nov 27, 2020 3:10:27 GMT
Well, I don't think that Flank is a noticeable feature. Since vast majority of warcasters and warlocks are not suited for the frontline duty, melee prowess is usually reserved for the last resort despite it is not so difficult to found the warcaster/locks with good melee prowess. Maddox is no exception, for she have no delivering and/or survival techs to bring her frontline. Even if it is a full Weapon Master, I don't think that it is different. A weapon is only useful if you can actually attack with it. It is not something totally useless either, though, for you may use it on the odd case. But it is never be a something you are rely on or always consider. It is just there for as a panic button.
Still Resourceful seems very good, for she is an upkeep heavy caster.
|
|
|
|
Post by darkangeldentist on Dec 2, 2020 20:39:31 GMT
I have cooled significantly in my enthusiasm for the changes to Maddox. Part of it may be green-eyed monster looking at the other changes that were made to models from different factions but most of it comes from a fear that the designers don't care and don't understand what makes her a dull and inflexible caster to play.
Year or two back I tried to see what she could do on the table. I remember facing against her right at the start of Mk3 and also seeing at least one other person in my local meta trying to make her work for them as well. Back then she was cripplingly focus starved, lacked meaningful personal presence & threat. She was a Stryker1 style caster who could deal damage on feat turn and solved the problem of pathfinder but didn't project threat very well, had no 'gotcha' game to keep opponents on their toes and was quite fragile due to how little focus she could camp and where she needed to be to let her army benefit from her.
The changes do a couple of nice things to her personal threat and well-being. Resourceful helps a lot with the focus strain, Flank (storm knight) gives her much greater personal melee threat and electro-leap is... well it's electro-leap. Not nothing but as meaningful as a rubber hammer most of the time.
However!
This doesn't change her strategy, tactics or army-list, which weren't good to begin with. When I played her, the games revolved around what her spell-list could do to support the army and leveraging the feat to crack armour. Outside of improving her survivability (due to focus camp) she is going be running the same list in the same way (although with flank she's much more incentivised to play storm division) and with the same problems. Her battlegroup may change to try and get a snipe target in there but really, in most games she's only going to have two of those 4 upkeeps benefiting from resourceful. I don't know if she was ever popular but from my point of view she has been one of the least popular and played casters in the faction. That unpopularity wasn't due to her lack of personal hitting power and presence, although focus starvation was certainly a factor. My personal problems ended up revolving around a lack of agency, poor interaction with the rest of the list and precious little flexibility when opponents could out-manoeuvre her. I have a lot more fun with Sturgis and nearly every other Cygnar caster I put on the table (which admittedly omits a few due to never picking them up) felt more involved.
Couple of suggestions about changes I would have loved to see;
Crit' disruption on her gun changed to disruption. Stryker1 has a disruption pistol and it's about the most meaningful thing he does on a turn to turn basis is snap off a shot to shut down how much an enemy jack is doing next turn.
Crit' cortex damage on her melee weapon changed to cortex damage. Again, why give a warcaster a weapon with crit' effect?! If Cygnar equips every defender and lancer with weapons that can straight-up destroy enemy jacks cortexes why wouldn't the warcasters benefit from the same level of tech?
Remove beatback from her feat. Add beatback to her card and "field marshal (beatback)". In all my games I can't recall ever getting any use out of beatback on my infantry or cavalry and only one game where I got any use out of it at all. As a field marshal benefit it opens up some shenanigans and keeps the original feat's impact since jacks were the most likely to benefit from beatback in the first place.
|
|
|
|
Post by Soul Samurai on Dec 3, 2020 14:41:24 GMT
Interesting points. I think I see what you're saying. I've never played with her so I don't really have an opinion, but my impression from what I had read was that she wasn't too bad but felt fragile and focus-starved, so my initial impression of the changes was that they sounded pretty good.
Perhaps you mentioned it and I just missed it, but have you had a chance to play with the new version yet?
|
|
|
|
Post by droopingpuppy on Dec 3, 2020 15:52:43 GMT
I didn't played her at all, but her statline and spells list remind me an alt of Stryker1 that become boring. Well, she have only three things to do in the game;
-focus allocation
-upkeeping spells
-consider pop the feat.
I don't think that it can be changed either. It seems she is designed to be boring caster - and as well as easy to run, since she is the new Battle Box caster.
|
|
|
|
Post by Soul Samurai on Dec 3, 2020 18:56:35 GMT
I see that she's a buff-bot like Stryker1, but while he mainly just buffs defense she looks more well-rounded, with defensive, offensive, and movement buffs.
But yeah, she seems to be one of the simpler casters, aimed at newer players. I don't see anything wrong with that; it's good to get new players into the game.
Anyway, let's not get too carried away hating on her without even playing her.
|
|
|
|
Post by darkangeldentist on Dec 3, 2020 20:54:49 GMT
Interesting points. I think I see what you're saying. I've never played with her so I don't really have an opinion, but my impression from what I had read was that she wasn't too bad but felt fragile and focus-starved, so my initial impression of the changes was that they sounded pretty good. Perhaps you mentioned it and I just missed it, but have you had a chance to play with the new version yet? You didn't miss it, I have not managed any games with her post changes. Not managed any games of Warmachine period since March unfortunately. (UK has not handled Covid well.) I have done a little list construction (mostly with Brawlmachine in mind) and noticed that my lists weren't much different (I did play quite a bit at lower point levels due to a newer player with limited options) and would be used exactly the same. I have not yet set up a home game against myself or tried any of the online options (I just can't get myself invested into playing via wartable/tabletop simulator) so it's currently theorymachine from me for how the changes affect her. When I tried to write a 75pt list it was the same one I fielded previously and I'd be playing it the same way. I liked the list then and it wasn't terrible but it wasn't great either and I don't see the changes to her affecting the game at all the vast majority of the time. (I could be wrong of course but I'm struggling to see what would happen differently.) She'll look less vulnerable to ranged assassination thanks to focus camp but that's about it. |
|
|
|
Post by droopingpuppy on Dec 4, 2020 4:05:22 GMT
Well, point out her weakness does not equal to hate her. I have played Haley1 on MKII, and you know she is boring as much as Maddox - she was effectively a Temporal Barrier&Arcane Shield bot, before effectively removed from the game.
Also, her kit is too similar with some other casters so I don't think that I can't judge her without play her. Although I didn't play Stormguard Infantry at all, but it does not means I am not aware of their grave fragility - since I played Stormblade Infantry(that have the exactly same victim stat) through a decade of MKII era.
|
|
|
|
Post by anoddman on Dec 5, 2020 0:59:16 GMT
From what Hungerford said on LoS, she’s one they went with a light touch on because of the upcoming Storm Division dynamic update. No release date yet for that, and our only spoiler is Desperate Pace on, I think, Stormblade Captains. That alone would help with her threat projection, especially if Stormguard get reworked into playability.
|
|
|
|
Post by darkangeldentist on Dec 5, 2020 12:49:39 GMT
From what Hungerford said on LoS, she’s one they went with a light touch on because of the upcoming Storm Division dynamic update. No release date yet for that, and our only spoiler is Desperate Pace on, I think, Stormblade Captains. That alone would help with her threat projection, especially if Stormguard get reworked into playability. That is not confidence inspiring. Going light touch on something that you know will get looked at again very soon just means that the second review will either see no further changes or they are more likely to go overboard as the minor changes didn't achieve anything. Going in a bit heavy would appeal to me more as, even if they go too far, the time the storm division CiD will come around before people get too settled with the idea of her at that power level. It's the opposite of what they've done in most of the previous CiD's. I have no idea what they can do to make Stormguard worthwhile. |
|
|
|
Post by droopingpuppy on Dec 5, 2020 14:48:06 GMT
From what Hungerford said on LoS, she’s one they went with a light touch on because of the upcoming Storm Division dynamic update. No release date yet for that, and our only spoiler is Desperate Pace on, I think, Stormblade Captains. That alone would help with her threat projection, especially if Stormguard get reworked into playability. Wow. Finally. From what Hungerford said on LoS, she’s one they went with a light touch on because of the upcoming Storm Division dynamic update. No release date yet for that, and our only spoiler is Desperate Pace on, I think, Stormblade Captains. That alone would help with her threat projection, especially if Stormguard get reworked into playability. That is not confidence inspiring. Going light touch on something that you know will get looked at again very soon just means that the second review will either see no further changes or they are more likely to go overboard as the minor changes didn't achieve anything. Going in a bit heavy would appeal to me more as, even if they go too far, the time the storm division CiD will come around before people get too settled with the idea of her at that power level. It's the opposite of what they've done in most of the previous CiD's. I have no idea what they can do to make Stormguard worthwhile. Me neither. There was some good idea to make Stormguard functional, but they accept not even a single glitch. |
|
|
|
Post by anoddman on Dec 5, 2020 20:59:44 GMT
From what Hungerford said on LoS, she’s one they went with a light touch on because of the upcoming Storm Division dynamic update. No release date yet for that, and our only spoiler is Desperate Pace on, I think, Stormblade Captains. That alone would help with her threat projection, especially if Stormguard get reworked into playability. That is not confidence inspiring. Going light touch on something that you know will get looked at again very soon just means that the second review will either see no further changes or they are more likely to go overboard as the minor changes didn't achieve anything. Going in a bit heavy would appeal to me more as, even if they go too far, the time the storm division CiD will come around before people get too settled with the idea of her at that power level. It's the opposite of what they've done in most of the previous CiD's. I have no idea what they can do to make Stormguard worthwhile. It’s not a CID, it’s a Dynamic Update. No feedback cycle, just rules drop. From a game design perspective, they start big in the first week of CID knowingly to define the brackets in the second week. That works when rules are still in a fluid state prior to print, not when you’re releasing the rules. To clarify, Maddox is not getting another update in the upcoming DU. They went with a light touch because the rest of Storm Division is being brought up significantly. It’s tough to judge her kit now without knowing what the rest of the models she wants to take are going to look like. |
|
|
|
Post by darkangeldentist on Dec 5, 2020 21:28:55 GMT
From a game design perspective, they start big in the first week of CID knowingly to define the brackets in the second week. That works when rules are still in a fluid state prior to print, not when you’re releasing the rules. To clarify, Maddox is not getting another update in the upcoming DU. They went with a light touch because the rest of Storm Division is being brought up significantly. It’s tough to judge her kit now without knowing what the rest of the models she wants to take are going to look like. I acknowledge that this is not a CiD drop and thus somewhat different. She is a Storm knight so it is not completely unreasonable to think that she would be part of a Storm division CiD. I am completely underwhelmed by her changes currently. Time and CiD for the rest of the storm division may change this but my current view is dour and pessimistic. Being light touch here because they don't wish to change her with the potential changes that come with the storm division CiD doesn't affect her in regards to the battle box and it's questionable whether it affects her positively beyond that. I'm left solemn and despondent. |
|
|
|
Post by anoddman on Dec 5, 2020 22:58:52 GMT
From a game design perspective, they start big in the first week of CID knowingly to define the brackets in the second week. That works when rules are still in a fluid state prior to print, not when you’re releasing the rules. To clarify, Maddox is not getting another update in the upcoming DU. They went with a light touch because the rest of Storm Division is being brought up significantly. It’s tough to judge her kit now without knowing what the rest of the models she wants to take are going to look like. I acknowledge that this is not a CiD drop and thus somewhat different. She is a Storm knight so it is not completely unreasonable to think that she would be part of a Storm division CiD. I am completely underwhelmed by her changes currently. Time and CiD for the rest of the storm division may change this but my current view is dour and pessimistic. Being light touch here because they don't wish to change her with the potential changes that come with the storm division CiD doesn't affect her in regards to the battle box and it's questionable whether it affects her positively beyond that. I'm left solemn and despondent. To further clarify, it is a Storm Division Dynamic Update in the works, not a Storm Division CID. |
|
