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Students of Conflict #8 - The Card Management Special with Bryan!
868 Plays2 years ago
In this very special episode of Students of Conflict we depart from our usual “Better Malifaux... one game at a time” approach and talk to Bryan about the power of card management within Malifaux, both before and during the game.
Hosts: Clay and Doug
Primary Guest: Bryan
Other Guest: Christian
Mentioned in the Podcast:
Students of Conflict Discord Invite: https://discord.gg/87sxzyWmkq … please drop by the #ep8-card-mgmt channel to ask any questions of Bryan (aka @personalglitch)
Rage Quit Wire: https://ragequitwire.podbean.com/
Plugs:
Tickets now available for the Lonestar Fauxdown Malifaux GT, taking place in Houston, TX October 13-15, 2023: https://lonestarfauxdown.com/events
Register by August 25, 2023 to get the special Fauxdown Fate Deck!
Thank-Yous:
HUGE thanks to Top Doug Design for all the terrain we play on here in Texas and for sponsoring this podcast, to Heroic Scale Gamers for streaming Lonestar Conference matches, and to Wyrd Miniatures for allowing us to use their artwork from the 2nd Edition Student of Conflict.
Top Doug Design: https://www.topdougdesign.com/
Heroic Scale Gamers: https://www.youtube.com/@HeroicScaleGamers
Wyrd Miniatures: https://www.wyrd-games.net/malifaux
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Students of Conflict' Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Straight out of the heart of Texas, here come the students of conflict, helping you become a better Malifaux player and reach the top of the podium, one game at a time. Alright everybody, welcome to Students of Conflict. We are Clay and Doug. Hello!
00:00:40
Speaker
And we are going to try to become better Malifaux players. We want to level up ourselves and hopefully level others up as well.
Focus on Top Players and Key Game Decisions
00:00:48
Speaker
We generally do that by interviewing top third players from the Lone Star Conference playing in Malifaux tournaments across the US. We don't try to capture their entire tournament journey, we just want to take an in-depth look at a single game and then dive into the key decisions that they made before the game, during the game, and now that they're looking back at the game, what were the things that they learned that they can pass on to others?
00:01:07
Speaker
Tonight though, we've got a special treat. First, we're gonna talk with Christian. Hey everybody. Who came in second at the May Malifaux Monthly Tournament held in Houston on 13 May. And we're gonna be releasing our discussion with him as episode seven. Then we're gonna speak with Brian. Yo. And anyone who's ever played against Brian knows that he's got very solid card management skills and has been very successful with crews that can leverage that. Way back in episode two, he offered to do an episode with us where we could really dive into that topic. And tonight we're finally taking him up on that offer.
00:01:35
Speaker
though it won't be one of our usual better Malifaux one game at a time kind of episodes. We're really looking forward to releasing that one
Breaking the Ice and Tournament Experiences
00:01:41
Speaker
as episode eight. So Brian, we are super glad you're here. Thank you so much for being with us this evening. I have been waiting for this a long time. I'm looking forward to learning a ton about card management from you. So I'm going to, you are not a first time guest. Welcome back.
00:01:56
Speaker
And so we're not going to ask you a ton of history, but I do want to hit the icebreaker question for this episode. And it's how do you break the ice when you're playing a game with somebody? And it's especially if you're somebody that you don't really know. Oh, I mean, I really don't. This is sort of a hard, a bad question for me because it's just like, hey, man, what's going on? Brian, nice to meet you. Blah, blah, blah. You know, I'm featured on students conflicts quite often. So, you know, good luck. Have fun. I feel bad for you.
00:02:26
Speaker
I am the owner of the biggest hat. Yeah. Which is actually back there. You can see it. Oh, look out. Oh, yeah. So that is actually a great opportunity for us to go ahead and we will ask for plugs later, I know. But tell us about this biggest hat thing, Doug. So it's a big hat.
00:02:49
Speaker
There you go. Thank you so much. It's a giant foam hat. It's a giant foam hat. Doug gave me for being good. I did not give that to you. You earned that. Thank you. He bullied me, everybody, in the parking lot. I was in the running, and then he just mugged me.
00:03:08
Speaker
So the biggest hat is the, you know, Ultimate Champions Trophy of the Lone Star Fodown Malifo GT. Our little logo is this little, you know, gremlin has got, you know, a big old Texas belt buckle is wearing a big ass hat. And so we decided, hey, who's got the biggest hats? That is the tagline for the Lone Star Fodown. So and we'll talk about that later.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yep, there you go. So defending champion right there. Yes. All righty.
Importance of Card Mechanics in Malifaux
00:03:38
Speaker
So in a normal episode of Student of Conflict, listeners that have been listening to us, hey, thank you. And then also normally we would have a section here that's kind of before a tournament even starts. And we would focus on your thought processes, Brian, about the faction you're playing in like master selection for a particular scheme pool.
00:03:56
Speaker
But for this episode, we still want to hear your thoughts about master selection, but we want to focus it on card mechanics and card management. And so could you just kind of talk to us kind of broadly on what makes card mechanics so powerful in this game? And then what kind of card manipulation should we be looking for in masters? Or do you gravitate towards in masters? Yeah, I mean, so in my mind, card mechanics are probably the most important
00:04:25
Speaker
part of Malifaux and it gets overlooked all the time because there's so many things to learn we're looking at these cool tarot cards have all these abilities and all these really awesome models that look around the table and you go okay I flipped some some cards it's a poker deck of cards whatever you know that's just how we do seven set dice not a big deal but
00:04:45
Speaker
The cards determine everything. They determine if you're scoring, they determine if you're making your hits, they determine where you're going. Card mechanics drive every decision in Malifaux, or they should be, right? Because you need to have, you need to hit your TNs, you need to outflip your opponent, you need to understand where your hand strength is at, you need to understand where your opponent's hand strength is at. And overall, what you're looking for is you want
00:05:15
Speaker
Sorry, I almost went on tangent. I'm trying to stop myself from going on tangent. So moving forward, because of card mechanics is extremely important to this game because of the amount of things that it can impact whether you win or lose this game. And so when we're talking about master selection, there are a couple of different ways that we can look for card mechanics on masters or on keywords as a whole.
00:05:44
Speaker
Right. Uh, when I talk about a card mechanic master, what is your first thought? Uh, I'm thinking either draw or cycling, like I'm looking for one of those. Yeah. Yeah. That's number one. Everyone thinks is does this draw cards or does it cycle cards? And that is one aspect of card mechanics. You also have, do I get positive flips?
00:06:08
Speaker
do I force negative flips? Do I do terrifying where I force card flips before you can even take an action against me? And there's a lot of little nuances throughout the game where card mechanics become important when you're choosing a master or keyword. So let's look at, I wanna say Jack Doll, but he has the best of everything. So I'm not, he can't talk about him.
00:06:36
Speaker
I mean, he's got card draw and terrifying. So whatever. And disc artifacts too. Kind of like anti-card draw, you know. Oh, yeah. Jackdoll is my favorite master to play hands down because of the amount of hand manipulation that goes into him as a master. Unfortunately, he's just a negative play experience for everyone else. So I just don't play him as much.
00:06:59
Speaker
Okay. And so that actually kind of, and this is going to be a tangent and I'm sure that we'll have others, but so, okay. Cause you're, you're very well known for playing Von Stuck very, very well. Who's got like some front of card, card draw ability and some really interesting card mechanics, but why?
00:07:17
Speaker
Yeah. What, why is DAW more your favorite to play as opposed to Von Stuck? Just looking at those particular two examples. Can you talk about those two? Yeah. So, I mean, okay. My, my three primary masters because carbon mechanics as a whole is Von Stuck, as you mentioned, Jack DAW, and then Riva, which everyone goes, Oh my God, Riva. And that's entirely different tangent I won't go into. Okay. But you're asking about the, why is Jack DAW better to me than Von Stuck in terms of card mechanics and carbon manipulation?
00:07:47
Speaker
And it's because of the way the card interacts. It's the way that the cards are interacting with the game state. So Von Stuck draws cards, card cycles. If we tie suits, you apply pressure to your opponent by trying to tie suits and force them to make decisions of giving you cards. Or you're cheating at low cards, specifically just to cycle a card.
00:08:12
Speaker
And that's great. It makes Fung took very powerful. He's my best master I play. And he's probably one of the best masters in the game currently because of that mechanic. But what makes Jackdoll more enjoyable to me is that not only am I drawing cards throughout the game, right? I'm hitting you because you have my upgrades, or I give you an upgrade that makes your life harder, and I punch you again, and I draw a card, and I'm giddy.
00:08:42
Speaker
I'm also forcing you to discard your hand, which pressures you into thinking, into deciding which cards to get rid of. I am making you go, well, my hand size is six, but realistically it's only two or three because I'm gonna discard three cards this round, right? Or I need to burn all my cards early in order to try to not discard cards, right? But then you also have terrifying.
00:09:10
Speaker
across most of the crew. So you need cards to cheat through the terrifying to hit my models, which I'm then going to make you discard. And you tie all that back into what Jackdoll1 and my Tressor have, which is Execute, where if you don't have cards in hand, I just kill you.
00:09:30
Speaker
just take a crow trigger and discard a soulstone or die, get off my table, right? And so something that I really enjoy is
Strategies for Mastering Card Mechanics
00:09:41
Speaker
first activation with Jackdaw is you hit someone three times first activation and they have no cards for the rest of the turn.
00:09:49
Speaker
because you burn all three, you burn three cards from his main melee attack and then you hit execute trigger three times and they're dead for the rest of the game. Like it's a horrible time for them. And the amount, I just love applying pressure to my opponents as much as possible and seeing how far I can squeeze them until they get too frustrated.
00:10:18
Speaker
and start making mistakes. And Jackdoll is perfect for that type of gameplay because of all the different interactions with his card mechanics. OK, so yeah, so that in that case, it's the kind of the even better than drawing for yourself. It's forcing the discards from from your opponent works really, really good for your play style. Yeah, but my play style is very pressure oriented, where it's very
00:10:44
Speaker
I'm going to make you decide on bad decisions every step of the way. And I'm going to keep making you make these decisions until you get so frustrated that you'll start making more and more mistakes that I can capitalize on later.
00:10:59
Speaker
OK. And so I love that kind of pressure theme and thinking about putting pressure on an opponent through cards, either because you've got better cards or they have worse or no cards. I'm going to try to kind of keep that theme rolling as we go forward. And so OK, are there any card mechanics that, and I'm looking across the internet here at Doug and Christian, any card mechanics that you particularly love that we haven't talked about yet that we need to take this approach moment to talk on?
00:11:28
Speaker
I really like, I really like Execute. I think that it's not, I don't think it's OP, but I think it's very good. I think it's just in general really good because, like he said, it's deciding between cards and soul stones. And when you're stealing soul stones, it hurts.
00:11:48
Speaker
It hurts bad. When you're getting hit with an execute trigger and it keeps happening and you have to discard, like Jinx, you know, the Jinx from Sami, she has that drain magic trigger.
00:12:00
Speaker
that hurts when they're cycling their hand they just they draw a card and discard a card while you have to discard a card or blank stare or you both discard a card and they're getting slow stuff like that those mechanics are nasty and it's not when it happens once it's when they're doing it to 3ap and you're like okay guy you you're gonna need uh you need to leave right and like that that's the thing right if you do it once you
00:12:27
Speaker
It's okay, I might discard my one, two, or three, not a big deal, which, I mean, I'm all for you pitching those, that one, two, or three, because that goes back into your deck for next round and you can flip that later. But when you can hit someone with that three times in a turn, and like I was saying, you know, when your six card hand turns into three cards, it becomes an entirely different game.
00:12:52
Speaker
It's bad though when you pull that four, like four really good cards, like a 10 and a two 13s and 11 and they hit you with that three times and you're like, you see that 10 hit the dirt. You're like, oh, this man has got some, he's got sauce in his hand. That is a great piece to wear. And I want to circle back on kind of a particular thing on like managing your hand when you're under that kind of pressure. And so yeah, hold that thought Christian, because we will definitely come back to that.
00:13:21
Speaker
because that is super powerful and it's useful, I think, it's gonna be useful, I think, for me as well as for our listeners, hopefully, to talk through that a little bit. And I think something that Brian mentioned that is an underrated or often overlooked part of hand management, at least from a defensive perspective, is terrifying.
00:13:49
Speaker
because having, you know, lots of terrifying in your crew, generally terrifying is, you know, 11 or 12. I think there's a few that are 10. But honestly, that means most of the time, average models are needing a six or seven to pass these terrifying, which, you know, the average card in the deck is a seven. Now, they might top deck it there. But if they're not top decking it, what they've got in their hand is sort of the, well, it's burning their hand down.
00:14:18
Speaker
And there's only so many times they can cheat that to get something off. And it's really nice when you have a crew that not only, so like the dreamer makes me think of this, of the, hey, not only do you have to pass this terrifying duel, if you fail this terrifying duel, well then, boom, we're all getting the benefit of healing off of it.
00:14:42
Speaker
and having that things that synergize with them, making that tough decision is the, do I burn this thing I don't want to, or do I help my enemy? That really pressures the hand. And something to continue on that with terrifying, because it's something we have not talked about, or have not brought up in the last 10 minutes, is
00:15:09
Speaker
Simple duels. Simple duels are a great way to pressure your opponent's hand in something to look for when you're looking at curves. Because if you have to flip 6 T and 13 willpower duels in a turn, you're going to fail 60% of those.
00:15:28
Speaker
And it might only be one or two damage, but that slowly stacks up.
Reading Opponents and Managing the Black Joker
00:15:33
Speaker
And this comes back to why Reva 1 is because if she can just make our Pyre Marks explode, you take, I think it's a 10-14 willpower duel, or take one damage, injured one, and she can hit that with her trigger six times in activation. So if someone clumps up too much,
00:15:52
Speaker
you can just force 18 willpower 18 duels, or willpower 14 duels on these six models, and just destroy them in an activation. It's- Yeah. Well, it's 14 for the first one, and then they get the injured on them. Right. So then it's, yeah, now it's effectively a DN15, and they're just like, ah, you know, do I cheat now or later? Yeah. I'm screwed either way.
00:16:14
Speaker
And that reminds me of a game I played against Christian that I think Wong Won's kind of a sleeper pick on the simple duels.
00:16:26
Speaker
because with his visap, he's like, boom, drop this shockwave marker there. First off, he's got the cataclysm marker. He's dropping it. He's hitting a whole bunch of models with this. Now that's all a bunch of move 13 duels. Now, like you said, move 13, that is taking a seven or eight for a lot of models. And if you pass them, you get glowy.
00:16:52
Speaker
And if you then later fail it, you take damage equal to your glowy. So it's you're racking it up, you're racking it up, and it feels bad to go, oh man, I don't wanna fail this, but I'm gonna take five extra damage from this. I don't wanna burn this 13, I was saving that for, you know, a special occasion.
00:17:13
Speaker
But that special occasion might be not taking a fuck ton of damage. Yeah, it never feels good to use such a high card on the defense. Yep. Well, especially for a simple duel, we're not even trying to go above your opponent's flip. You're just if I don't see the same, my master dies.
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. How do you balance that out and go back to Brian on it? Simple doodles, absolutely powerful. And like statistically they're awesome, but this is where like, you know, luck happens, you know? And so, you know, there's some times where it's like, yeah, I'm wanting you and I'm fizzapping you like mad or you're reviewing someone like mad and, and they pass them all.
00:17:58
Speaker
And not like with a bunch of 13s and 12s and a red joker that they pass them. They're passing them with just enough. Their top deck happens to be, air quotes, lucky at that point, because they get the sixes and the sevens that they need. And you're just like, well, that was my master's activation. And I did flat nothing. And so statistically, I know, that was a master's activation. How do you balance it out? Or where do you put those kind of effects in your grand tier of
00:18:26
Speaker
discard is maybe your most powerful, and I'm not asking for a specific list of card mechanics in order of coolness, but where would you put the simple duel ones in that list-ish? One of the biggest benefits of simple duels that I really enjoy is
00:18:47
Speaker
Let you know, terrifying, simple duels, whatever. Yeah. Let's let's say, you know, I'm terrifying. Twelve. My opponent needs a seven to hit it. They flip an eight. I'm perfectly OK with that scenario. I am happy if they fail it. I'm happy if they pass it, because if they pass it, that that card is not hitting me. And if they flip another card that's no longer that eight, that could be a lower card. If your opponent flips,
00:19:16
Speaker
like a god and hits all those duels during your master activation. It's not great. You know, you're frustrated. It hurts. But that all those cards are no longer in their deck to be used against you. And you know, their deck is now going to be cold in a lot of cases, right? Because if that means that all their weeks are left in their deck, or the weeks are in their hand, and it means that, hey, your next activation
00:19:44
Speaker
you send your beater in because they're going to flip horribly and you can just go to town. And so that's where I don't necessarily say we count that count cards. But trying to keep track of if your opponent's deck is hot or cold is also very important. Like, oh, yes, absolutely. They flip four.
00:20:09
Speaker
Severe's in the last two activations. That's horrible. Well, guess what? Those, those severe's are gone. You can go back in there later and do more damage. Now that doesn't apply to someone like Misaki who just reshuffles their severe's back in. Yeah. But that's a whole different matter.
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah, no, totally good point. So, okay, I wanted to shift on to a couple other mechanics. We had some questions coming out of the Discord that Ben Jules had asked about the weaknesses of kind of the cycling mechanics. You end up with, you can cycle a bunch of low cards out. You've got a hand, your control hand is nothing but severe, more certainly high cards. And so, yeah, you have your hands on fire
00:20:51
Speaker
Where do you place that? It's great, but yeah, like you're saying, you're not going to top deck those ever. What do you think about cycling versus draw maybe is the best way to ask this question? Draw is definitely better than cycling in a lot of cases. They both have their different places. I much prefer draw personally. To this question in particular, stacking your hand or having nothing but severity in your hand is horrible.
00:21:21
Speaker
It's to me that is a worse hand than a balanced over average hand because you're going to get one great godlike activation. And then the rest of the round is gonna be awful for you. So.
00:21:38
Speaker
Let's say that you draw your hand, you cycle whatever. You've got red joker, 13, 13, 12, 11, 10. What this means is that when you try to do simple duels, you're going to miss a lot of them. You're going to cheat those really strong cards into something where you need a four or a five to go off. You also run into the scenario where
00:22:05
Speaker
So it makes you discard a card. You have to get rid of that severe out of your hand. Or you say, hey, let me dive on your master. I'm going to pitch all these cards because I want to kill your master. You'll likely not kill him. You'll do a bunch of damage, but you won't kill him. And then you're dead handed for the rest of the round. You don't have anything. In my opinion, I would much rather have something like a three, seven, eight,
00:22:33
Speaker
Uh, seven, eight, 10, 13 is like what I would prefer as a natural hand because you have a lot more flexibility with that, which means that there's a lot less instances of where pressure, hand pressure is going to cause you a horrible time.
00:22:52
Speaker
I agree a lot with that actually. If you get insane cards, you are out of luck later. Yeah sure, maybe you get some good defense points, but tech-wise, especially with those simple duels, you're doomed.
00:23:08
Speaker
I mean, what someone hit your master and they flip a seven, you flip a two and they're like, you're like, well, I've got to give up a 13 to stop this middling attack. You know, it's, it feels bad. And then the attacker still has the advantage because even if you defend with that, the attacker can still get through with, even if they match you or they get above you. And then that 13 was wasted technically. Yeah. It's.
00:23:36
Speaker
A strong, a strong hand, like all severe or top level mids with all spears is generally a bad hand because it limits your options severely. In my opinion, you know, that's not fact or anything. It's just, it's what I've found with all my card draw crews. I play my cycling crews. I play it's you want a good average.
00:24:01
Speaker
No, that's cool. No, thank you. I want to combine, we had within our Discord, and again, for listeners, the invite to our Discord is normally in our show notes at the very top, but we will absolutely make sure we got that in this one. Please join us and you can ask questions too.
00:24:19
Speaker
I had some questions from PKN768. That's Pete from Rage Quit Wire. And I will tell you that if you're listening to this and you're not subscribed to Rage Quit Wire, you should pause this recording right now.
00:24:32
Speaker
go over, find Rage Quit Wire, either their YouTube channel or their podcast and subscribe to them and then come back to this one please. But seriously, question from him and also a question from Musab ties together and it's, what do we do if we're playing a crew that doesn't really have great guard draw or guard cycling or guard mechanics? We really like whatever crew or it happens to be the crew that we bought in before we heard this episode or whatever.
00:25:03
Speaker
We're playing that. What do we need to look for? How do we deal with that? And we may go through this later in the episode too, but just in general, as we're talking about just a general concept of what do you do if you're air quotes stuck with a master that doesn't have a ton of great card mechanics.
00:25:20
Speaker
Um, so, uh, I would say to start that off is get a new master. Okay. So there are ways to mitigate having no card draw with your master or having card cycling, you
In-depth Strategy and Card Management
00:25:40
Speaker
know, masters that have inherent positive flips, uh, are, are always going to be good because you're flipping more cards raises your average card numbers. Right.
00:25:51
Speaker
Masters that force negative flips, like with serene continents on Dreamer and such. Although Dreamer is a bad example because he's just amazing. But ways that impact the flips are what you're going to want to be looking for, right? Where either plus flips like Tony Ironsides, which I mean, I wouldn't say she's great, but her crew has a lot of plus flips.
00:26:20
Speaker
which is going to be really good. Reva 1 has a lot of plus flips. Sonya 2 has a lot of plus flips. And so ways to get additional flips gives you more value out of your actions if you don't have the cards in hand. Now, if you're trying to play a master that doesn't have card mechanics of any kind and they still have some high TNs, all you can do is stone and hope for the best.
00:26:47
Speaker
which is not bad, just like, yeah, you just need to take lots of stones, you know, build your crews to where, you know, that's how you mitigate that. Or to hire out a keyword. Yeah. That's that thing. Would you say that a crew that gives out a lot of focus is a great way to kind of manage your hand if you don't have that card draw, card cycling?
00:27:10
Speaker
Yes, because that is adding plus flips. So a good example of that is Perdita 1. I know Perdita 2 is top shit and she's probably the second best match in the game. But before she came out, I enjoyed Perdita 1 extensively because of all the focus that came into our crew. And you could blow through
00:27:34
Speaker
car flips because those plus flips were just everywhere in her crew. So any way that you can get positive flips or even let's say
00:27:48
Speaker
I can't remember his name, the, the monk master, uh, Shin long. Yeah. So Shin long, where he can just spend a token to add to, to his duels, right? Or spend cheetahs to add plus to his duels. That mechanic is not necessarily a card mechanic, but it is making that helps, helps him because he doesn't have a lot of card draw on his crew. And so you can look for small things like that, that can help adjust your average, be a little bit better.
00:28:19
Speaker
Well, he does have a lot of card draw in his crew now, but that's. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's fucking Koji protection money. I think, though.
00:28:32
Speaker
It's not like you're all out and you can't just play Masters that don't have great card draw. There's still plenty of Masters that get away with not having a lot of card draw. Like Travis, he plays Masaki, even though Masaki herself has one really good stacking mechanic.
00:28:49
Speaker
Uh, I, I play 12 cups of coffee into it and stop it and he still rolls me, no problem. And, uh, he, he's just, you know, just game knowledge may actually get you there too, but yeah, I mean, Travis is a different beast though. I mean, he's a robot here of this game, but, but you're right. They're the masters that don't generally, I'm not going to say every single one of them because there are some.
00:29:14
Speaker
bad masters in this game, but masters that do not have card mechanics or crews that don't have card mechanics typically have something else that they excel at which tries to balance things out.
00:29:28
Speaker
Yeah, they can scheme like a maniac so they don't even need to, you know, do they're never flipping like screen flipping. I'm just going to go score and not flip ever anything ever, you know, or maybe you distracted if they give if maybe their main mechanics, they get their opponent distracted. That's their way of giving negative flips. That's how they counter not having a card advantage. Sonya Krid, Sonya one is the big one where she has zero card draw and she's horrible on the table.
00:29:58
Speaker
but she has an ability which reduces her opponent's ranges based off their burning value which compensates for having bad cards because your opponent can't shoot you anyway so who cares about cards yeah yeah we can't do anything we're uh yep exactly they can't push the button if they can't move their hand
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah, so but I like the idea of just kind of thinking of of yeah it's not hopeless yeah certainly choosing a master that's all about card draw is it is an option but there's. I love how how we've talked about how there's just a ton of different mechanics and ways just think about.
00:30:37
Speaker
Yeah, how to get as good a card flip as possible, and if that's the cards in your hand, or if that's the cards in your deck because you're able to get rid of bad ones, or if it's just because we don't even care about flipping anymore, because we're doing nothing but scheming. We've got options to do that, but think about the cards.
00:30:54
Speaker
even before you get to a tournament. And so I love that. So anything else, anybody got any other thoughts or comments on kind of this section, kind of that master selection before we even get to a table sort of discussion? I would say something to add is when your opponent is choosing a master, your real masters, you should definitely be looking at them and see what kind of card mechanics they have.
00:31:22
Speaker
Because that's going to help your game play and help your decision making a lot more. Do they have terrifying? Do they have plus flips? Do they draw cards? Do they have that same conceit?
00:31:34
Speaker
Are they vaccine who can just do her nonsense with all the reconfiguration ability nonsense that she does? You only got once. No problem. Now you have 15 stats on everyone. Well, this is Malifaux. But but looking at what your opponent's card mechanics is will help you make better decisions during crew selection so you know what you're walking into. Because the last thing that you want to do is walk into Jackdaw with zero card draw of any kind.
00:32:03
Speaker
and zero ruthless. If you do that, you might as well concede the game. Yeah. There's no point playing it out. That's a great point. And so, yeah, just as we kind of shift from before the tournament to before the game, yeah, master declarations happen and we're thinking about list building. Yeah, bring ruthless if you're facing terrifying. Okay, got it. You know, check. But yeah, other thoughts along that kind of line, things that you think of
00:32:29
Speaker
either you personally or just our audience in general should think of when your after master declaration happens and you're like, what kind of things have they got for card mechanics and what do I need to do to continue to put pressure on them despite that?
00:32:45
Speaker
I mean, things like looking for simple duels are going to help a lot knowing, oh my God, are they running McCabe? McCabe can cause a bunch of simple duels, which causes problems. Just going through your opponent's options is going to help you understand what's coming your way. For example, did Christian declare Wong into me?
00:33:10
Speaker
Yes, okay, do not clump up during deployment. If you clump up during deployment, you're gonna get blasted three times every single round and you'll be flipping a bunch of duels, right? So it's very important to look at what your opponent's crew is, your opponent's master's keyword is gonna bring to the table because are they gonna be applying so much pressure to you that you need to reach outside the box?
00:33:40
Speaker
with evasive to try to avoid blasts and try to avoid our pulses and such. Do you need to reach for Ruthless? We have so many tools in all of these factions other than Neverborn, I think, is the one that's the worst one with trying to have tools. But most factions have tools which allow them to deal with a lot of these problems in other keywords and factions.
00:34:07
Speaker
And I only threw it and everyone in there just to make fun of Andre because he always says that they have nothing. So there you go. No, that's awesome. I mean, we got we got card draw if you use ancient pets. Which is true.
00:34:18
Speaker
Yeah, and can ignore red jokers, or flip their lights. Yeah, ignore blacks, yeah, for sure. So which is important. So I like the concept of, yeah, thinking about card mechanics of your opposing crew when you're facing and when you're list building.
Mental and Emotional Aspects of Gameplay
00:34:35
Speaker
We have a tiny amount of time between games. So you're in a tournament setting, and you've got the 15 minutes to break down, set up, figure out your crew.
00:34:45
Speaker
where do you prioritize or what kind of questions do you ask an opponent? You know, you've got a ton of experience, five years or so of experience at the game. And so it's like, but yeah, if it's something less than that, you know, because I'm always asking, you know, I'm here as this bottom third player got it. You know, who are we?
00:35:02
Speaker
What are your min three beaters? You know, I'm either asking or I'm looking at their cards to figure that out. I'm figuring out like what kind of their threat range is on their range things. And then I'm developing a game plan. Even if I'm, even if I don't have the perfect tech pick in my kit, I'm still thinking about game plan. And so I'm thinking about, you know, I need to either be prepared to engage or avoid the min three beaters. And I need to either be prepared to.
00:35:25
Speaker
to defeat or avoid whatever dangerous guns they've ranged attacks they've got. What kind of questions should I be asking or thinking about in
00:35:35
Speaker
with card mechanics in mind. And is there a priority list if I've only got five minutes to figure out my crew and figure out what I'm doing? What's the big impact things? So Ruthless, you don't really need to ask because you should just be able to see that, right? That's a simple thing to see. Yeah. The big ones I typically ask is, do you have shock waves? Do you have pulses? Because those are the two indicators that will tell me, am I taking a bunch of simple duels this game? Yeah.
00:36:04
Speaker
That's gonna be really good. Or, you know, hey, how do you draw cards? Do you draw cards? And if I was playing a bunch of jokes and someone asked me to go, well, if we tie suits, I'll draw a card in every duel. And me saying that, well, for a newer player, they likely won't really register that. They'll go, okay, that sounds cool. I'll see it when I see it. And then once they see it, they go, oh, that's how that works. But,
00:36:31
Speaker
asking you up front will help you get understanding what's coming your way. And hopefully you're not playing someone who's going to lie or be shady, right? We shall be playing open face of, Hey, uh, here is the capabilities of my crew. This I may or may not hit you with this. I may or not throw three or six long balls at you, but I might it's in, it's in my cards.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah, I could so yeah, so you probably so based on that I might not want to bunch up when I deploy. Yeah, exactly. That's why I always ask for shockwaves and RS. I'm sorry, shockwaves impulses, because it determines if I deploy clunked or not. That is probably my number one question even going in with as much experience as I have.
00:37:17
Speaker
See, that's something I should be doing. I get kind of lazy, to be honest, when it begins the beginning of the game. Like, I'm a head scratcher type of guy. I just like, look at my hand, and just kind of figure out what I could do with them. But I don't really think about my opponent's crew does. And I think that's what sets me back a lot of times. Like, you know, and I just tend to like to learn the hard lessons. But that's personal. And that's also because I'm lazy. So that's the next step for you.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah. True. True. That is very true. Too many hard lessons.
00:37:50
Speaker
I mean, that's how I learned. I just got my teeth kicked in constantly. It's my favorite way to learn. You're welcome. You're welcome. It's true. So we are living that dream. And it's good that we've talked about that before a lot. Texas meta is you will absolutely get your teeth kicked in, but you will absolutely learn a lot. Everyone's super good about talking afterwards, given a few minutes to be able to chat through stuff and help you internalize those lessons.
00:38:20
Speaker
It is awesome. So cool. Any other thoughts from anybody kind of before the start of the game and list building thoughts that we should be thinking about? Yeah, I think you pretty much covered most of it. I would just add, I guess I would add on to the fact that because like I played, like I'll sit on a crew whenever I'm learning a crew, like I played, I almost got 50 games of Yuleks. I lost a lot. So like it was when I first started playing, all I did was only play Yuleks.
00:38:48
Speaker
And pretty much the very first thing I thought about was like, where is my hand going? Before the game is just immediately, okay, I have these two high cards, those are going to be war pigs. That's what I did, and then I would decide further that. I was like, okay, then the rest of these cards are discarding to prevent damage to my pigs.
00:39:09
Speaker
And I didn't really think too hard on it, but I think that's normally what my deciding factors are, is just like, okay, if I'm playing the kill crew, you know, somebody that can really hurt people. Like when I was playing Shimmies McMorning, it was like, okay, these two high cards, this is gonna take somebody out. That was the only thing that I ever thought. But I didn't really go further into that. I think that Brian's thought is a lot better. It's like knowing what you're getting into is pretty smart. I should probably take that for later.
00:39:38
Speaker
You're welcome. Yeah, no, I definitely am. That's why I'm doing this. Well, and I think that comes down to also what I think one of the best, most powerful upgrades in the game is for Rezzers, the Whisper.
00:39:55
Speaker
Yep. Yes. Where they've got intuition. Intuition is the best ability in this game. Now you need to be able to know, right. You look at those cards and go, okay, what order am I putting these in? And what do I have in my hand to know? Okay. Like I got, you know, a big card, a shit card, and a mediocre card. You know, cause to be honest, that's what the average, you draw three cards. You're going to probably at, you know, on average have a good one, have a shit one.
00:40:25
Speaker
have a mediocre one, and knowing the order to put them back in, that's the harder lesson to learn. But knowing, hey, okay, I want to fail this duel, so I'm gonna flip this one where it's gonna burn that card, and I'm gonna cheat that.
00:40:43
Speaker
and then I'm going to have these cards for these other things. But knowing what those first three cards are for your master lets you plan out that turn to go, okay, there's nothing they can do about this. I'm gonna get this off and then we shall see. Do you wanna know my favorite thing about intuition on masters?
00:41:09
Speaker
On launched hook, you use the card, the first one to fail a duel. And then you get plus flows for the rest of his activation. Yeah. Okay. You know what? I'm going to use this bonus. Hey, you know, it's doing better. I might draw a card out of it. Who knows? Do you have a defensive trigger built in? I'm going to use it on you. Thank you. Thanks for the car.
00:41:34
Speaker
I don't know if the player is listening, but I believe the guy said he was from Las Vegas, but he also is a YouTuber, and I had taken a picture with him. I'm sorry, I forgot your name, don't hate me, but I had stumbled across their videos a while ago, and it's been a minute, but he played that verse me, and it was the first time I ever found out about that crew, and it was
00:41:56
Speaker
Is I'm like freaking out because it's like my model is gonna be ignored for strats and schemes which that ended up destroying me as well, but He was like, oh, okay now that I failed it and I cheated a high card to stop that too It does not I feel I got I got positives for the rest of the time. I'm like
00:42:13
Speaker
This OP crew, I'm like, white knuckle him. It was a stomping. He had like five points to my one. It was just a brutal crew. But sorry, I go back to you, Brian. No, you're good. I mean, I do that all the time. It's wonderful. Oh, God, I don't want this ignored. I'm going to Chia 13. All right, I'm going to Chia 1 to draw a card, and now I'm going to just kill the model with my plus flips.
00:42:35
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, I matched your suit by cheating in that one. And so now, yeah, the card. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And you didn't even need it because most of the time your hands full of cards already. So you didn't even need to put slips, but that's just the extra. Look, look, look, look, look. The goal, the goal is Von Stuck and drawing cards. Yes. Drawing cards is great. Second card is great.
00:42:59
Speaker
But the goal is to pressure your opponent to the point that just, they just give up. Yeah. That they don't cheat. Yeah. Yeah. You've won if they're not cheating, you know, like I'm so tired and so being down of drawing those cards, letting you draw cards that they just go, this is bullshit. I don't want to play anymore. You know what? Do what everyone do. Like that's that's the goal of every launched up game.
00:43:24
Speaker
And it's why I will call out every card draw. I can't like, hey, would you like to cheat? Because I'll draw a card if you don't. And they go.
00:43:33
Speaker
Again, why are you doing this to me again? All of the thinking. It's just some hard thinking right there. Yeah, that's awesome. So that's great. And a great segue into the whole during the game section. So yeah, I'd like to start this at the very, very start. We talked some about hand management and having that set up and how you might play some actions during a game.
00:43:56
Speaker
I always start at the very very beginning of the start phase. So you've just discarded cards and then you draw cards. And so pretend it's turn two. Can you talk to me about your decisions on discarding cards and rules of thumb that you use there? And then when you draw what you're looking for in your opponent, a chance to talk about poker tells, I know that you've got some good experience there, a chance to talk about using stones, a chance to talk about building that
00:44:22
Speaker
or shaping a hand so that you have the right cards in your hand for whoever gets the first activation. Winning initiative turn two is a BFD. And so yeah, just that entire, well, sometimes not always, yeah, but often. So yeah, talk to me about the start phase, please. Yeah, so, you know,
00:44:41
Speaker
You pitch your cards. In my mind, I keep eights and above unless I need to hit a specific T in or I have a specific suit that I'm going to need later. But if it's a seven or less, it typically goes back in the deck. And to be honest, if I have a seven in my hand at the end of the round, I'll try to cheat that into a duel just to get that back into my deck so I can draw it or
00:45:06
Speaker
so I can either draw it or flip it later. You should always be doing that if, you know, at the end of the round, you do an action and you miss, cheat that card in that you want back in your deck to pull back later, right? You don't really want to discard it except then your deck. Really, the only cards you want to discard are going to be weeks, right? At the end of the round, you really want to only have one, two, three, four, five, and maybe sixes.
00:45:35
Speaker
in your discard pile because those cards are not come back full for a full round, which is wonderful. You don't want them in your deck, but if you have a seven in there, it sort of feels bad. Anything higher than seven, you just you hate yourself.
00:45:52
Speaker
whenever you draw a card. So this is the poker tell phase, right? So we draw our cards. The first thing I do is I do not look at my hand. I watch my opponent draw their hand the entire time. My eyes are glued to my opponent's face because the amount of information people give away with just a sigh, a slumping of the shoulders, a little giddy like shuffling movement that they just got a really good card like the red joker in their hand.
00:46:21
Speaker
People don't hide their tells at all when they're drawing their cards. So you can typically gauge what your opponent's strength is by watching them draw cards. And also, whenever it comes time to burn a stone to draw cards is another moment where you can tell the hand strength of someone. You know, they draw their hand and they look at it and go, all right, I'm going to burn a stone to draw cards. Before you've even looked at your own hand or drawn your own hand, it's just our first immediate reaction you go,
00:46:49
Speaker
That's a dead hand, right? They've got four weeks in their hand of just trying to trash them. For me, I always make sure, one, I burn a stone to draw cards when it's my turn to do so, because there is an order to do it. And then, two, I make sure that I do a little mental internal count. I go, one Mississippi, two Mississippi. I'm going to burn a stone to draw some cards. And I play it off like no big deal. I could have a handful of weeks.
00:47:15
Speaker
or a handful of severe and you'll never know what I have because I've tried to be very blank faced and very neutral as I say it. I don't reorder my hand. Some people will do weakest to strongest and they'll fan it out to, oh, I need my three, four, eight, nine, 10 red joker. When they order their cards and they're cheating, you can determine where that card is in their strength order.
00:47:46
Speaker
So my cards are fully random in my hand unless I need a specific TM for something and that will go to the side because that's something that's for one purpose, like a necropunk leap. I was totally going to ask you about that with leaps because I'm like, I need a frigging four of masks and I don't want to accidentally discard it. And it's happened more times than I care to admit. So it actually warms my heart that that has apparently happened to you as well.
00:48:12
Speaker
So or you cheated to draw a card to start cycle and go, oh, God, I needed that. Yeah. So now now I need to go figure out a way to make this leap happen because I really needed the leap. Totally. OK, you. Oh, I feel so good about that. Yeah. So T.N. should always be separated. Right. Because those are your these cards are dead to me. There's been games where I will even put them on the table face down and just go. These are not touched until I need them because it's
00:48:41
Speaker
Like, that card is a point to me, right? Another thing, you should never put your cards on the table.
00:48:50
Speaker
Uh, I know I just said I do it with like my, my cards, but your whole hand, when people put their whole hand on the table, that means that they're done with them. They're not looking at them. They're not getting used. These are trash cards, you know? Oh, I've got three cards left in my hand. Put them down the table. I'm not even looking at them in between activations, in between cheats. I'm saying no, no, no, no.
00:49:12
Speaker
What that tells your opponent is either A, they're for very specific use cases such as TN, so they're out of the equation, so they're top-decking against you. It might be a red joker because some people put their red jokers on the table because it's like, that's my gotcha card. Or they're trash and they don't matter. So in every case, they're top-decking against you.
00:49:39
Speaker
And if you have cards in hand and they're just top decking, hoping for the best, you have an advantage. And so you never want to tell your opponent that because they will just start taking some wild swings at you, hoping for the best, right? So you never want to give away the strength of your hand because doing so will make your opponent become more bold with their own cards and their own attacks. Or conversely, between making them bold,
00:50:09
Speaker
can also make your opponent more cautious if you're got to tell that you have the God hand. Yeah. Yeah. So now suddenly they're cautious and you kind of want them to run into you. So it's another, it doesn't necessarily fit into the section, but it's a good segue or a good thing that I'm just going to ask anyways is, so how about black joker? You've got the black joker in your hand. You want to keep it for a couple of turns.
00:50:35
Speaker
How do you hide that and especially if you are running, you know, you reach a point where you've run through your entire deck and they haven't seen the black Joker. So now they know it is in your hand. But but short of that point, how do you how do you hide the black Joker? You know, the black Joker, you can't really hide very well. You can hide it for a turn. But let's say you draw it on turn two and you keep it to turn three. They're going to figure on turn three that you have the black Joker in hand and
00:51:03
Speaker
that does change the calculus on them going in on you because one, they know that you'll never, that the block will never be flipped for you.
00:51:11
Speaker
But two, they know that one of your cards is a dead card, right? You never use a black card. Yeah, you're not going to be cheating that one. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually very different in that I know that the standard way of thinking is if you draw the black, you keep it in your hand at all times. But there are definitely times where I will discard it at the end of turn three or at the end of turn four. Or yeah, the end of turn three or even the end of turn two.
00:51:39
Speaker
to make sure that I have a better card going to the next round. And the reason for that is because let's say I draw a turn two. It's not going to pop up at all turn two. Discard it at the end of turn two. I'm not drawing at turn three. So it's two rounds of the Black Joker, and rounds two and three are the most important rounds for Killy Cruise.
00:52:05
Speaker
Because if I turn four, their beaters are dead. So like Joker doesn't matter as much. Right. One way or another. Yeah. So in my opinion, I'd much rather describe the card at the end of the second, at the end of the second turn and draw another card into my hand that's going to get used in round three rather than holding onto it and just, you know.
00:52:27
Speaker
Well, technically, that would be discarding the card at the start of time. Yes. But if you're if you have like Joker in your hand, your post going to figure it out. You want to try to you want to try to hide it as much as possible, but they're going to figure it out.
00:52:43
Speaker
All righty, so we had a question from Musab. We'd already talked about stoning for cards, but they also asked, what's the best way to mitigate or deal with a terrible hand? And specifically, I'd like to know, what do you consider a terrible hand? We've talked about a good one is maybe an even distribution from all the way from super weak to great. But yeah, what's a good hand and what's a terrible hand to you? And how do you deal with that? A terrible hand is you have eight high in your hand.
00:53:12
Speaker
Yeah, you have a medium moderate as like your highest card or it's eight or less and then one severe is a horrible hand.
00:53:23
Speaker
If you don't have two severe in your hand, you should be stoning for cards. In a lot of cases, unless you have a lot of funky TNs that you have to hit, that's a lot of middle tier stuff. McCabe is a good example of what that would look like, where you want a lot of moderate cards to make sure that they top their TNs. But having three or more weeks in hand is where bad hand, right?
00:53:52
Speaker
And that's when you need to stone for cards and you get to figure out what you have to do in order to mitigate that with whatever you draw. And sometimes you'll draw those next two cards and they're both also weeks and you have to pitch them. And at that point, you just have to understand that
00:54:10
Speaker
If your hand is bad, and the two cards you discard aren't bad, and you discarded one or two cards from the last round that were weak cards, your deck is fire. Your deck is going to be so hot on those top decking flips that you only have to worry about your hand as much unless you have terrifying or something along those lines.
00:54:37
Speaker
But the more weaks in your hand, the less they are on your deck. And so that's where you want your strong cards, unless you needed a specific action to go off. But you just have to understand that your deck is going to be better, and you need to flip those cards, as many cards as possible, right?
00:54:54
Speaker
I would probably say don't focus and attack. Don't spend 2 AP for one attack. Attack twice because your cards are naturally going to be better. Because you know your deck's going to be pretty hot. Yeah, exactly. No, that makes great sense. Do you stone? And maybe this goes to the larger concept of is it worth a point? A stone is generally going to be worth a point. But yeah, I love the example that we've used of
00:55:21
Speaker
You have a leap, whether it's a Silvert or a Necropunk or whatever the heck, but you have a leap that needs to go off. You've got to have a four mask or a five mask or whatever. Do you stone for those? You've got no masks. Yeah. At what point are you like, there's a 25% chance, or I don't know what the chance is of drawing a mask from a stone. Is that worth it or not? Because I have certainly struggled with that question myself.
00:55:46
Speaker
So points, any investment of resources into scoring a point is worth it, even for the chance of scoring a point because we're playing a 16 point game. And so you need to be doing whatever you can to scrape together that 6%.
00:56:05
Speaker
of your win condition in your favor. Whether you're saying 16 points because it's eight for us and eight for the opponent. You're playing a full 16 point game, eight for you to score and eight for you to deny.
00:56:20
Speaker
And so any time that you need to invest resources like stones, cards, actions, it's all worth it if that gets you the 6% of your win condition, gets you closer to that goal of winning the game. So absolutely, if you need that mask to guarantee the point, and if you don't have that mask, you just don't score that round, you stone for that mask.
00:56:46
Speaker
I think it's so if it's if you need a four of masks or better you've got it's a
00:56:56
Speaker
20.37% of your deck is cards that are a four of mass or higher. 20.3. How'd you get that? So that is 10 cards plus the red joker. Oh, 10. Sorry. 10 cards plus the red joker. So 11 cards divided by 54. Yeah.
00:57:17
Speaker
Yeah. And you haven't seen it yet. So you know, it's in the remaining, you've already drawn your six or seven and you have your discard pile. So yeah, but it's, it's like that percentage or higher 20% or higher. That's the percentage of your deck, not your percentage chance of drawing the card. Yeah. That's hard. Okay. I was going, this is what, you know, the percentage of your deck that will get you that leap is 23%. If none of your cars in hand are that card. Okay.
00:57:46
Speaker
So, a stone is definitely worth trying to hit that mask. If it's the only way you're going to score that point. Because otherwise, you're dead in the water and you lose out on part of your win condition. Especially because the Necropunk can't spend that stone to just add the suit. Right. And I've even gone so far as to
00:58:13
Speaker
knowing on turn four, I need to get my neck or punk to the spot. So on turn three, if I don't draw, I will stone on turn three to get the card and hold it into turn four. Okay. Now that, that makes great sense. Yeah. If it's one of those, there's no other way to get this and you look ahead and go, I'm going to have to do this in two turns. I will do what I can to get that resource earlier. Yeah. It makes great, great, great sense.
00:58:43
Speaker
So I've got a question to ask before we move on from this because a lot of what we were just talking about there with the big time for tells in the game is when you draw the cards. Yes. All right.
00:58:57
Speaker
It is no secret to the world. I kind of wear my emotions on my sleeve. I'm not the only one. How do you mitigate not having a poker face? I'm attempting to become a better player too. So what is a way, what are ways to mitigate not having a poker face or what advice do you have for helping to deal with your tells? So in poker, the only way you're going to be able to deal with your tells is by someone telling you what your tells are.
00:59:27
Speaker
You don't know what your tells are until someone points it out to you. It's a common problem with poker where you know what the common ones are and you try to avoid those, but it's natural human instincts and reactions and habits that you form over time. So it's very hard to break those without someone acknowledging to you that you have those problems. So it's very hard to just break poker tells without third party feedback.
00:59:56
Speaker
Right, you need to know what they are before you know what the problem is before you sort the product. So if you don't have that, the ways it some of the things that you can do to mitigate the information that you've revealed through tells, there's someone that's watching and analyzing your actions, your movements is some of the things I mentioned earlier.
01:00:18
Speaker
You know, when you draw your hand, try to have a neutral face. Try to be talking to someone. Don't show your hand to your friend next door of what your hand looks like. Don't immediately stone. Don't sigh. Don't slump your shoulders. Just look at your cards. Take some steady breaths. Make a decision. And then just try to be as clear and robotic as you can. Just varies zen.
01:00:45
Speaker
And this is why Doug calls me a robot is because part of what I do is when I'm in game mode, I'm very neutral face. I've got my game face on. I'm very focused. You don't really see a lot of information for me because I'm so focused on not giving away any information.
01:01:04
Speaker
Unless it's going really bad for you. Unless it's going horribly enough. If you have a carry. You can't because you're like whatever. It's that the tilt, but you do a very good job of recovering from a tilt usually.
01:01:20
Speaker
So you've taken the obviously the be very like stoic, be a very flat effect kind of thing to reduce that. For someone who doesn't have that, who hasn't developed that skill yet, is it okay? Have you ever seen anybody who kind of leans into it? They're like, I don't have a poker face. Oh my God. I'm just gonna take a photo of my, I don't know. It doesn't matter whether my hand is good, bad or different. I'm gonna have this joyous expression or I'm gonna take a photo of it to share for later. Hey, look.
01:01:50
Speaker
Just let me pause for a moment while I take a photo of my hand, even though maybe it's actually not complete shit, but they're pretending like it is. Have you ever seen people do that? And is that effective or is that just a waste of effort? I've never seen anyone fake taking a photo of their hand to try to tell whether it's really good or really bad. I've never had that.
01:02:10
Speaker
I don't know how effective it would be. It would be interesting because usually when someone's showing their hand, it's either really good or really bad. So you could give away fake information. And that's when we start diving into a deeper game of tells, right? When you start falsifying tells that they're your opponent off.
01:02:30
Speaker
What I have seen people lean into is their friendly, bubbly personalities where, you know, we have a lot of people that just love talking and being friendly and just open and positive. And if you learn how to keep that going, even when you look at a bad hand,
01:02:50
Speaker
you also reveal nothing. So I leaned into the stoic neutralness. You stonewall them. Yeah. Yeah. But if you can lean into that bubbly, friendly talkative, you know, you draw your hand, you're just talking and chatting and having a good time. And oh, yeah, you know, I guess I'll sell some cards. Not a big deal, whatever. And just like pick up your cards. It's that's very doable. And that would also be another route to take.
01:03:17
Speaker
or overplaying the, oh man, I'm stoning. Like really overplaying the, oh God, this is garbage, I'm stoning.
01:03:28
Speaker
Yeah, I have done that a few times where I will give tells of, you know, look at my hand and I'll stone too quickly to try and make my opponent think I've got bad cards. Stone vocally. Oh, like, oh man, I need better cards than this. I know it's your turn. I don't care. Take all the time. Yeah. Take all the time. You know what? I'm frigging stoning, even though it's not your turn to stone. Yeah. Or you draw cards and you just go,
01:03:57
Speaker
I need a stone. And then they go, Oh, they have bad hand, but your hands actually pretty decent. You know, I have done that. It's not common. And I don't know if it actually works or is effective in any way.
01:04:12
Speaker
They have to be paying attention. Yes. Something else to look for when people are giving out tells and information during a game. And this isn't really tells. It's something that you can't really help is whenever people are cheating cards into the duels, right? Let's say that they need a four for their action to go off. They flip a three, they sigh, they cheat a seven in.
01:04:40
Speaker
What that tells you is they don't have a five or six in their hand. Yeah, or a four or five or six in the hand. Right. Yeah. So, you know, the rest of the cards are seven or up or lower than lower than four. Right. And what that lets you do, which is very hard to remember in game because there's so much information going on.
01:05:01
Speaker
But depending on what that missing card is, let's say they cheated a 10 for a 6 so they don't have a moderate in hand, you can cheat modders to hit to force them to burn severes to dodge. So I can be like, oh, he doesn't have any modders in hand. I can cheat this Aiden to pull his 13.
01:05:23
Speaker
And then you're getting hard value. You still expect you're going to lose that punch, but you're pulling the 13 out of his hand. He won't. Yeah. It's in that positive for you. Yeah. So there are cases where that will help a lot. Uh, if you're watching what your opponent is cheating and what they need to cheat.
01:05:41
Speaker
No, that is great insight. And I wanna talk some more about cheating. Have you got any other, before we get into- I actually have an important note to make that this is something that a lot of players forget. And that there is a correct order to declare whether or not you're spending a stone to draw two cards and discard two cards. Whoever has the initiative,
01:06:08
Speaker
which means the player who went first last turn is supposed to declare first. A lot of players completely ignore that.
01:06:21
Speaker
Yes, it does technically matter. And that's important because your opponent stony for cards will sometimes inspire you to stone for cards. So knowing if your opponent is going to stone for cards will and it will influence what you're going to be doing with your stones.
01:06:42
Speaker
it's it's also that it's not even in turn two it's where it often makes a big difference on turn two who's going to get initiative and that it's the initiative from turn one is often not the person who wins the flip but the person again like you said doug who goes first which i know you guys know this but just for listeners like keep that in mind it's a yeah the guy who won the flip or the gal who won the flip is not necessarily is not
01:07:08
Speaker
Often on turn one the person who has initiative turn, right? It's the person who went first Yes, and turn one it is if no initiative has been flipped at all yet. It is the attacker. Yeah Now I've no I have not had this come up very often in games as to the actual enforcement of the order
01:07:35
Speaker
But it is something to note that if you are the person who is supposed to buy cards second, if you're holding off, buy cards until you see if your opponent does or not.
01:07:49
Speaker
it is generally a very good thing to say is ask them if they are buying cards before buying cards yourself. Because if you buy cards and then they buy cards as well, they are not allowed to do that. But it feels like a dick move to say, sorry, you can't do that. I buy cards seconds. You're buying cards reactionarily, but you are within your rights to say that. Yeah.
01:08:16
Speaker
I will always, if I'm second, I will always call out them stoning for cards first and say, would you like to stone for cards? Because that gives me information to help me make my decisions, right? If my opponent stones before I offer, or if I'm supposed to stone first and they just do it,
01:08:39
Speaker
That gives me also a lot of information about their hand strength. Right. So I will never correct anyone. I will never be like, oh, you did that in the wrong order because you just gave away some information that I'm going to use against you later. Right.
01:08:55
Speaker
But if let's say if you were supposed to stone and take cards first and they did it first without first asking you and then said, hey, you can't do that. Well, if they didn't give you the opportunity, correct? Yeah. Now, this is only ever come up like once or twice for me and like a very long time of playing. But it is something that can come up. Honestly, this is something that really only comes up
01:09:25
Speaker
top, top, top table stuff where they are getting all this information from that there. Yeah. True. But it is important knowledge to know so that you don't pull a gotcha on someone or that you don't get a gotcha pulled on you because of this, because there is technically an order that you spend stones to draw cards.
01:09:51
Speaker
Great, great, great discussion. I wanted to circle back. This is kind of a question from Greg Pack. Was asking, clear from the other side of the Atlantic, a listener in the UK asked in Discord about
01:10:06
Speaker
just if we've got any other insights on managing your hand you talked about putting cards that you know you need to use to make a tn on one side or another or whatever making sure that we don't accident yeah that's the one card you might put on it on the table just to make sure that it doesn't happen uh but greg greg was was talking about how they have a habit of burning through their hand early where their opponent has only used one or two and so can you just talk about kind of
01:10:29
Speaker
maybe the tempo of card management or depending on the crew, the crew that you're facing, how you try to keep a hold of hands and how you continue to pressure them during a turn. Yeah. So once your opponent doesn't have cards in hand, they are top decking and praying, right? They don't have any options. They don't have any control anymore. They're just.
01:10:55
Speaker
going to see what happens and bad things happen when that comes up. There's a lot of different scenarios because there are times where I've burned my whole hand at my first activation. There's times where I've let my master die to save my hand. And what that always comes down to is, is this scoring or denying points? That's, that's, that is the ultimate decision on any type of card management that you really need to decide on is
01:11:26
Speaker
If I burn my three severes in hand on my first activation, am I guaranteed to score a point or am I guaranteed to deny a point or am I going to kill a master guaranteed regardless of stone use?
01:11:39
Speaker
because there are times where I'll see someone burn their whole hand to try to kill a master, but not count for stones and go, oh, God, well, the master is left alive with one health left and I'm out of cards. This doesn't go real bad for me. Heal, heal, heal. The rest of the turn is going to be rough. Yeah, I mean, I actually did that at Nova. I miscounted something with a grave goo with my Reeva.
01:12:09
Speaker
I miscounted the amount of shielding it was gonna get from my attacks, and he got one extra shielding than what I counted. So I survived with one health, ate Riva, ran her back into the middle of his crew, and then spit her out and killed her. So it's very tough on knowing how to pace your hand,
01:12:35
Speaker
The question is always, am I scoring points? Like literally, that's what that comes down to. Yeah, and a guaranteed. So how do you deal with that though, winner? It's statistically likely to get you a point.
01:12:51
Speaker
but it's certainly not guaranteed, you know? And so where do you make that call? Is there a number, if it's 66 and a third, then oh my God, I'm going for it or just gut feel or what? It's gut feeling. I think anything above, I think it depends on how desperate it is. If it's 50% and up, I'll go for it. If it's desperate, I mean, I'll take those 10% chances.
01:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, because you have to. Otherwise, I'm losing. If I don't go for this and get lucky, then I'm going to lose. Okay. Right. I mean, I've even done things to where I'll cheat a card in to tie the duel so I can flip an extra card hoping for that red. You're fishing. That was one of the things I learned early in plain Malefoe, and this went back to second edition of the, all right, I know my black is out of play. My red isn't in my hand or come up.
01:13:44
Speaker
I'm going, you know, I'm going joker fishing. Yep. Then you know what, maybe yo, Hey, Oh yes. I'm cheating to get, you know, that, that, that trigger, but it's like, Nope, I'm going joker fishing. And that.
01:13:58
Speaker
three cards, you know, hey, you got a better chance. People joke or fish against me a lot because of as undead, we have hard to wound. And so they get an extra card and they will go, I'll take four cards. Give me that red eight damage. Let's do it.
01:14:17
Speaker
Yeah, Heart of Wound is very bittersweet at times because of that. Yeah, there are a few red jokers out there and so, yeah, for sure. So no, that's great. And there, I mean, there's also something to be said about getting that chance to, you got a hand that you think you can take down their master. Even if maybe that will not necessarily score you a point,
01:14:47
Speaker
Losing a master that fast can really tilt an opponent.
01:14:52
Speaker
Yes. And may end mess up their play. Or if you see their scheme runner, who's not going to score this round, but it's gonna get, gonna get into your deployment and get breakthrough next round and you can't stop them. You should probably invest the cards now to remove the scheme runner before he scores breakthrough in two turns. Right. So.
01:15:19
Speaker
Tilting your opponent for moving in Unactivated Master before turn 4 and scoring into 9 points are probably where it's okay to burn your hand and just
01:15:31
Speaker
live or die by the deck at that point. It's all calculus and trying to figure out what the best decision is in that moment. Because there's a lot of different variables. There's a lot of different situations. It's why this game is so great because there's so many different things that pop up that you just can't account for.
01:15:49
Speaker
Uh, because there are times we're burning a whole hand early. It's great. There are times where it's really bad. Yeah. And I think it should be noted that when I say tilting the opponent, I don't mean trying to literally piss them off or something like that. I was going to play Malphur wrong, my friend. Okay. It's not the I'm I'm not doing going the hey, I'm going to play in such a way to be a dick is the hey, I'm going to make an act. Oh, there is a.
01:16:18
Speaker
There's being an asshole, and then there's the, hey, I'm going to take down your master in a way that you can't deal with because that is an emotional blow. There's two different ways when it comes to tilt it.
01:16:36
Speaker
I wanna jump in here too, yeah. Because Brian, you kinda talk about it, I'm like, no, I'm trying to be a dick. And you're not. No, no, no, I'm just joking, I'm not trying to be a dick. No, no, there's the, cause I have met people who, they don't tend to stick around the community that long, but who will play the dickish game
01:17:00
Speaker
And either they've gotten, you know, called into, uh, they've got called the task on it or they get driven out of the community. Yeah. Oh, there's absolutely people like that. And that it's the, when I say tilt your opponent, losing your master.
01:17:18
Speaker
unexpectedly early is an emotional blow that a lot of people, it back foots them and it derails their thought process. And if you can derail their thought process and throw off their game plan, even if you like, ultimately that's that master wasn't going to score them points. It's not going to score you points. It's not going to deny points or anything there. It's still a emotional gut punch.
01:17:48
Speaker
It's a moral victory for you. Yeah, it's the pressure that you're talking about back early in the episode where you're just like, it's so much pressure in that moment. And now they're like, I need to pause and figure out how, you know, what's my way forward? You know, I was counting on this, this, and this, and this, and this out of the master, whether they're a support master, a ski master, a kill master.
01:18:09
Speaker
they're like, they suddenly don't have that. What is my path to victory now? And if all that you're doing is burning five minutes off the clock because they're in the tank trying to figure out if they even have a path to victory, that's a huge victory. And this is important for listeners. Texas is a tough, very competitive meta. It's not a dick meta. There is one or two dicks out there, right? But that's just humans. There's gonna be some small percentage of people that are dicks.
01:18:38
Speaker
The reality is there's a lot of pressure that we put on each other here in Texas, and it's super cool. And so yeah, card management is one way that you can put a lot of pressure on a player. Yeah, I'll thank Clay and I have played. Have we played before?
01:18:54
Speaker
No, we haven't. It's been said that I would love to, and I look forward to that day, but yeah. Lately, it would only be on the first, because I'm not going to be meeting you on the top tables necessarily, but there is going to be a day where I am. That's part of why we're doing this podcast, is to help me and others level up. No kidding.
01:19:14
Speaker
And I think it comes down to, I mean, a lot of talk when it comes to hand management and deck management is getting into the mental and emotional side of the game. Because look,
01:19:29
Speaker
your deck is doing and the stats that you have on your card, no matter who puts that crew on the table, that is what's there.
Understanding Card Management for New Players
01:19:38
Speaker
But there are some crews that you put the identical crew on the table, one person's gonna pilot it better than the other because they have the mental and the emotional game that goes along with it. And I feel like proper deck management and reading your opponent
01:19:56
Speaker
And, you know, putting out that controlling what information you're putting out there is the harder to quantify part of the game. Yeah, I agree with that.
01:20:10
Speaker
Yeah. And because it's harder to quantify, it's easy to not think about it. You know, we can memorize cards or we can read opponent's cards or we can, whatever, but we're not necessarily thinking about it from a card management standpoint. We're thinking about other, other stats, you know, and, uh, and so now super, super useful.
01:20:28
Speaker
which I feel like that's something that gets missed a lot with Malifos. People don't, at least for newer players, right? Like experienced players, they get it, but someone new coming to the game, they see it, the shiny cars, they see the shiny plastic, they see all the different markers and that's our focus. They don't think about card manipulation or card management. They don't consider that because that's just,
01:20:54
Speaker
It's there, but that plays into the entire
Advanced Skills: Deck States and Counting Cards
01:20:58
Speaker
game. It's why this game is so superior to other games is because of or playing with an average set of cards where our odds are the exact same because it's the same deck of cards design dice roll of a random number generator. So yeah, but the other thing is, as the turn goes on,
01:21:20
Speaker
you get a better understanding of what the odds of your deck are. Yeah. That, you know, okay, my blacks come up, my reds also come up. This is what I've had in my hand. I got a slim deck. You do get to know, you get that even if you're not truly counting cards, once you've got, you know, some years under you about playing the game, you develop that feel for
01:21:52
Speaker
where your deck is at and where your opponent's deck is at. Yeah, I think that's a great kind of way to transition into what we would do in our normal better Malefoe one game at a time kind of thing. We'd be talking about advice. It's after the game and we're looking back. And so it's advice for a bottom third, middle third, top third player segment that we run through. And I'd love to kind of hit that within the context of card management.
01:22:20
Speaker
And so there's a question that came up and that I'd like you to interleave through that as we go through bottom, mid and top tier questions that Tommy Bull or Tommy double on discord, one of our local Texas players, he brought up counting cards and kind of ingest and Doug, you were just talking about kind of judging deck heat and Ben Jules and some other people in the discord. We're also talking about about deck heat.
01:22:45
Speaker
But Tommy brought up counting cards and so even though that was originally just can you talk to that a little bit as you go through? Middle tier or you know bottom tier middle tier top tier how much of that is useful how much of that is you know? At some point in there's counting like every card which is a high skill that you've even said that you don't have as a top tier player but like keeping track of the jokers is kind of a in my mind a bottom and
01:23:09
Speaker
a bottom tier skill that we need to work on. I should at least know whether me and my opponent have flipped over their black jokers and red jokers or not. But where does that fit in as you're going through? Yeah, so deck heat is a huge topic because like Dick was saying, it's something that you just acquire a feel for as you get in a lot of reps.
01:23:36
Speaker
For someone that's new to the game, getting a feel for your deck's heat is very difficult. But what you should always be keeping track of, like you said, is the jokers.
01:23:48
Speaker
you should always know if the jokers have been flips, because that's going to give you enough information to know, hey, he could spike nine damage here on this hit, you know, with a red joker on the damage flip, or it could be zero damage, or, hey, my summon might actually fail here because I haven't flipped my black joker yet. Or knowing that, hey, they got a slim deck, their red joker hasn't come up yet.
01:24:17
Speaker
I'm going to throw a bunch of simple duels their way. Yep. Because I'm going to get, you know, I'm fishing for their red joker on something they don't give a shit about. Exactly. Yeah. So knowing where their deck is at when it's getting slim, so you can try to fish for the red, which can backfire because obviously if you slim it more, that very stop hitting the red on you. Yeah, exactly. But.
01:24:45
Speaker
you're trying to pull the red out in the least useful way possible.
01:24:52
Speaker
And so knowing where the jokers are, if they've been flipped or not, that's probably bottom tier. And then understanding basic deck heat is probably your middle tier players, where, hey, I've flipped a bunch of severe this game. So I know I'm going to have a bunch of weeks for this round. I'm going to have a bunch of weeks for the rest of the round. Because my first four cards I flipped this round were all severe.
01:25:21
Speaker
of what, 4 out of 16, no, 4 out of 12 Severe's gone, that's 30% of my Severe's are out, right? Yeah. It's a huge number to lose right out the gate and so you just know going into the rest of the round that your deck is not going to be as good as your opponents because of those Severe's are flipped.
01:25:46
Speaker
And vice versa, right? You flip a bunch of weeks, like I was saying, with a hand where you discard cards, and when you have cards in your hand, you know your deck is going to be on average a lot better because of those weeks are not in there. And so you can do small little tricks to manipulate your deck heat of, you know, when do you discard cards? What kind of cards you discard? When do you discard them?
01:26:12
Speaker
If Jack Doll attacks you and forces you to pitch a card, do you get rid of the one or do you get rid of the five? I get rid of the five personally because that five goes back on the deck and I'm okay with that. I want to save the one to get rid of at the end of the round. And there's a lot of little tricks that you'll pick up over your games where you'll just start learning how to make your deck hit just a little bit better.
01:26:39
Speaker
because that's when people go, oh my God, Brian's deck is always so hot. It hits all the time. I don't understand how he does this. It's because I'm constantly cycling my deck. It's because I'm constantly doing little tricks to try to edge the heat up a little bit more in it and try to manipulate it. Obviously, not cheating, but doing little tricks that will influence my following turns.
01:27:06
Speaker
Yeah. The whole, the whole thinking, the next turn is definitely like kind of a mid tier thing. I think in that regard where it's like, yeah, that, that I'm not even, yeah, I am concerned about what I'm discarding now. Maybe I can use a five. No, it's more important. Think about the next turn and the fact that, yeah, I'd rather have the one in the discard pile sitting there. There's no way I'm going to get that. And a five sometimes is just enough to get by. So yeah, no, that's great.
01:27:33
Speaker
And sometimes if you stone for cards and you draw your hand and you've got like one, one, two, three, and then decent cards, I'll get rid of the two and the three and keep the ones in hand with the intent of discarding them at the end of the round so I don't see those cards again. Yeah. And I think another important thing to learn for the bottom tier player, beginning player,
01:28:03
Speaker
is to know what the numbers in the deck mean. Understand that seven is the average card in the deck. Unless you have plus flips, then your average is a nine. Oh, I didn't realize that was how the math was, but the average, so the average card of a straight flip is a seven.
01:28:26
Speaker
because zero through 14, 54 cards averages to seven. So knowing that, all right, at the very least, can I get this off with an average card or not? How much is spending this card costing me? It's like, oh,
01:28:46
Speaker
This is a, I've got a target number where I need an eight or a nine to get it off. Okay. This is a more expensive action for me to guarantee as opposed to the, Oh, I need a three or a four to get this off. You're just more likely to be able to top deck that. My favorite ones is when you need a two to get something off and you flip a one. I think that's a titanium, right?
01:29:15
Speaker
Uh, yeah, something like that. And it's also the, Hey, knowing when you've got it, it's like, okay, am I going to spend the stone on this? Like, I only need a three or four to get this off. I'm going to spend the stone, which of course, then you're going to flip the 13 with the suit. You just spent the stone on because, but because magic, if you didn't spend that stone, it wouldn't have had that suit.
01:29:42
Speaker
Yep. Because that's just the way reality works in my mind. So I think if we were going, you know, entry middle and high entry is following Joker's middle is understanding your decks heat.
Top-tier Player Strategies and Advice for Newcomers
01:30:03
Speaker
And then I think at high level is understanding your opponent's hand heat.
01:30:08
Speaker
right? I think that's when you jump from mid once you get the deck heat down, that's not something you really improve more on unless you want to count cards. And to me that that's no, not the effort. Yeah, no. And like, in the end, that's kind of a Yeah, there's only so many hours that you can spend, there's only so much break, you know,
01:30:28
Speaker
You can spend brainpower on that, sure, in a game. But that's brainpower you're not spending on stuff that will score you points. The points that you're going to get from carding cards is not necessarily worth the points that you get from spending that energy on direct scoring points. So yeah, that makes good sense. Right. I mean, counting cards in Blackjack is perfectly fine.
01:30:49
Speaker
because Blackjack, you're there for the cards and there's nothing else other than you're gambling, right? Yeah. But in this game, there's so many different decisions and odds and different things you have to consider and so many different moving pieces that you can't count cards. So to me, the high level is gauging your opponent's deck strength. So, you know, cheating in those cards and understanding where their hand is at
01:31:17
Speaker
will help you become a better gamer because that's going to tell you so much more information. Let's say my opponent cheated a 12 in, but they only needed a 10. I know they only have 12s or 13s in their hands, their high card. I'll cheat a 10 to say, give me your 13. I'm okay missing that. A 10 for a 13, even trade. I win that every time.
01:31:42
Speaker
Or if they don't, you go, cool, I didn't waste my own severe to hit you. I wasted a moderate, right? So I think once you get to the experience here, it's going to be understanding your opponent's hand strength as they play it and trying to do things to
01:32:01
Speaker
and trying to do things to manipulate your own deck's heat are the two skills that an experienced player will have over the moderate player. Because a moderate player can understand deck heat, but they're not going to know how to influence it or what to bring to try to modify that at the right timings. Yeah, that is awesome.
01:32:23
Speaker
I think something else to add onto that top, that top third there. And this was something that, you know, you definitely hit on with the, you know, the tells is the understanding how to read your opponent and understanding how to give away as little information as possible with your actions. Yep.
01:32:52
Speaker
I know that personally, giving away information, that's something I need to work on. I definitely am not... I don't have a great poker face. I know that it's gonna be shocking, shocking to anyone who's ever met me. Hey Doug, I always know when you have the black joker in hand. You know what? The thing is, I am okay with my opponent knowing I have the black joker in my hand.
01:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually terrifying to your opponent, right? That's more mental mind games. Right, and I would lather them, no, I'm not gonna play with it face up on the table in front of me, but if they know I've got the black joker in hand... He will show it to you and go, yep, yeah I do.
01:33:42
Speaker
I'm okay with them knowing that, and it's the, yeah, they can figure it out, but you know what? I am totally okay with them knowing that there is not a way for me to guaranteed fail something. And I'm okay with them living in fear of whatever it is they are afraid that I might fail, knowing that I can't fail that.
01:34:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And there's no more Jack black Joker fishing for them, you know. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so, um, kind of as a and thanks very much for talking through the the the
01:34:23
Speaker
Card counting kind of a kind of question there that other advice for a bottom third player and one that I'd specifically Like to hit I'm just gonna use the words that came from bathysphere on our discord nuggets of wisdom surrounding card evaluation Management that you think are most important to convey to new players What insight about the underlying math, you know, we could talk math for hours and hours and hours and pull up a
01:34:47
Speaker
whatever multivariable calculator things, but like, what's the most helpful math that new players should know? And then any other nuggets that you have for new players or bottom third players, even if we're not new.
01:35:01
Speaker
anymore. Yeah. So for a interplayer, understanding the math, right? Like Doug was saying earlier, the average flip is a seven, just flat average. Positive flips are a nine on average. Obviously, like that's not a hard average, right? You can flip a one and a five and whatever, but the average is a nine. And then the average on negative flip is a five.
01:35:25
Speaker
right. So that's some good underlying math to understand gauging your TNs on your duels and knowing do I have a chance of top decking this TN.
01:35:43
Speaker
That's a big one. Understanding how many Severers there are actually in the deck, there are less Severers than there are any other kind of card in your deck. So Severers are much more rare, so when you do see them, that reduces your deck heat significantly more than it grows by seeing weak cards.
01:36:03
Speaker
There's a lot more weak cards in our spheres. Yeah, that is such a huge point. And like, I remember the light bulb coming on on that. And it was some time ago. This wasn't like last week. This is five minutes ago for you. Yeah. No, but it's like seriously for brand new players. That's that's one of the biggest tips I think that we could give to new players is like severe. Everyone thinks it's kind of like a third, a third, a third. And it's not.
01:36:26
Speaker
It's five five and three. It's 20 weeks to 12 severe. Yeah. It's a huge difference in numbers. I'm sorry, 21 weeks to 13 severe because of the jokers. Oh, yeah, because the jokers. Yeah. So those that that is such a huge number for newer players understand on how impactful the severe are because there's so much rare compared to everything else.
01:36:55
Speaker
And I would consider even like sixes as like weak plus. Right. Oh, they can do moderate damage. But are they going to actually do anything? Likely not. Unless it's like fly with me or ride with me or something like that. Right. Or that. Well, might as well use it for a moderate damage. Right. On a. Oh, I got a straight flip somehow. All right. Moderate damage. Here we go. Yeah.
01:37:21
Speaker
And then also making sure that you understand following the jokers is a big one. And the last thing would be if you're spending cards, you should always be following the points. Points are the most important part of this game. And so everything you do needs to be moving you towards the goal post of scoring a point.
01:37:48
Speaker
that is 100% everything, every action needs to be dedicated to scoring those eight points or denying eight points. So, yeah, and I guess that would be the other math, right? It's not an eight point game, it's a 16 point game. Would be something for a newer player that is something you don't, that doesn't click for someone that's new, because you go, oh, I say score eight points. No, no, no, you want to score eight and deny eight, so it's 16 points in this game.
01:38:15
Speaker
yeah keep that in mind and that denying is as valid as scoring you know and so I'm winning 1-0 is the same as winning 8-0 I mean obviously differential is a big deal but
01:38:28
Speaker
1-0 is still a win. And there are some crews that specifically go for 1-0 victories. And 8-8 is still a tie. And 8-8 is still a tie. You scored everything. They scored everything. Guess what? You didn't win. Good job. You had a fun time. Honestly, the 1-8 tie I've had in a tournament was one of my favorite games I've ever played. But that wasn't a win, and that was just some fun shenanigans.
01:38:55
Speaker
Yeah, true. That was a Gen Con. I think it was a Gen Con third round of my first of back to back undefeated years. That was the year I got no wins, but no losses. The the titanium Marcus. The titanium. Wow. But no, that was that was against
01:39:24
Speaker
Nathaniel from St. Parrot Scoundrels. We have a fucking blast.
01:39:31
Speaker
That's awesome. How about advice for middle tier player? What kind of stuff would you give for the middle tier as we're looking at card management, everything there? It's going to be understanding deck heat, learning how to manipulate your deck in a way that's advantageous to you, understanding when your deck is hot, when it's cold, and then starting to watch her poker tells.
01:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's poker tells hand tells you want to start looking for those things to move on to the next level. And that's, that's a good point. We also, you know, there's the the idea of
01:40:18
Speaker
of kind of tech picks to go against an opponent's crew may fit into that zone where it's like, yeah, based on not just, you know, I need to defeat there, whatever. I'm going into so-and-so, so I need condition removal. Got it. Let's talk about card management. I'm going into so-and-so, therefore I need access to put more card pressure on them. I need this to get around a lot of concealment.
01:40:42
Speaker
Or knowing how to get those positive flips on things. Or knowing how to watch out for them putting you on negative flips on the defense. Because that, you can have the highest, most awesome godlike hand. If you're on negative flips on the defense,
01:41:06
Speaker
Yeah, you can't cheat. You can't do a damn thing about it. And actually, you're in a worse spot because your deck is cold. So yeah, so if you want to talk about hand management when list building, that's why you should look at your opponent's keyword and figure out what do they bring to the table?
Advanced Gameplay Preparation and Strategy Wrap-up
01:41:28
Speaker
Are they bringing plus flips? Are they bringing terrifying? Are they bringing ruthless?
01:41:33
Speaker
uh are they bringing simple duels are they bringing card draw you know the front of on shook's card is draw cards for tying suits like that's huge how do you mitigate that do you bring beaters that don't rely on triggers
01:41:48
Speaker
or don't have built-in suits to their abilities that way. They can't just have an automatic trigger, right? I mean, I've seen that a lot where I'll see someone that goes, oh, you have a built-in crow on your defense? Okay, well, Anne is going to shoot you because she has a built-in crow on her gun. You can't dodge me drawing a card, right?
01:42:13
Speaker
Looking at what your opponent's crew does as a keyword is going to help you figure out those tech picks. And the biggest ones are going to be dealing with things like simple duels, dealing with shockwaves, pulses.
01:42:33
Speaker
and anything like that. Yeah, that makes sense. So cool. Sorry, I'm getting a little tired. No, I get it. No, this has been so good, though. So we're going to wrap up, though, with advice for top third player. Not that you necessarily have the answers, but yeah, what skills are you still trying to develop when it comes to card management?
01:42:53
Speaker
I don't want to give these guys any advice. Those are going to be beating me. So let's be honest. A lot of the, when it comes to hand management stuff, the, a lot of the stuff to learn for the top third player is difficult to learn the picking up on tells controlling your own tells.
01:43:17
Speaker
Those are hard things that you have to learn through experience. And that's why, you know, there's some people who are winning all the money in the World Series of Poker. Those guys would be great at Malifaux.
01:43:33
Speaker
Yeah I mean I think the stuff I'm still working on is I'm still trying to perfect my tell reading for people I don't play against constantly. Oh yeah that makes great sense because yeah it's like it's a tell for me you know if you're playing me you know exactly or whatever you know somebody that you probably regularly say. If I play Andre I know his tells so
01:43:56
Speaker
playing Andre, I can read him like a book. So I know when it's going to be good or bad for me. He doesn't. Yeah. Can't hide anything. But if I go to Nova and I play against I don't know Cody. You know, I don't know how to read Cody. I don't know. So I have to figure out how to pick up on the cells a lot faster against my non fellow Texan players.
01:44:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, which is great advice. Yeah, so that, and then you'd already talked about that figuring out how to get that last little tiny bit of heat kind of out of each interaction of your own crew is something that's a top tier thing. So yeah. The extra heat is a big one that will help top tier players because figuring out where those little 1% differences
01:44:50
Speaker
is what matters on the top table, right? That slight advantage is all it takes to win or lose when it comes down to the wire for these top table players. Yeah. And especially because, yeah, top table, if you lose, then often you're dropping off the podium. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So no, we'll take that 1% and it's worth spending the effort to try to figure out how to get that 1% delta. Yeah, for sure. Exactly.
01:45:19
Speaker
Yep. No, makes great sense. So cool. This has been absolutely fantastic discussion. You got any other thoughts for wrapping up for our audience for for Doug and me as we're trying to level up here? No, I mean, I think we've covered just about most of the stuff. I mean, there's definitely a lot, a lot more ways we go deeper into this topic conversation.
01:45:44
Speaker
But I think we're already at two hours on this. Not quite there. We're not quite there, but this has been a monstrously long one. And so to all of our listeners, thanks so much for sticking with us. If you got other questions for Brian, please, please drop by our Discord and we would be happy to chat with you. Thank you. Oh my gosh, so much. This has been an amazing discussion. I have loved it.
01:46:07
Speaker
Man, I'm hoping our listeners do. If our listeners turned out, well, they're missing out. Anyways, thank you so much, Brian. Appreciate your time this evening. Before we go, though. Yeah. Because we've done so much talking about decks tonight.
01:46:22
Speaker
I feel it's very important to mention that we brought it up earlier. So, time to plug things, I'm gonna shamelessly plug Texas shit right now. So, tickets are now available for the Lone Star Fodown MALPH OGT, taking place October 13th through the 15th in Houston, Texas. If you register before August 25th,
01:46:47
Speaker
you will get a custom designed fake deck made especially for the Lone Star photo. It looks awesome by the way. And I guarantee that the average card in every single deck is exactly seven.
01:47:06
Speaker
Sweet. Sweet. But it's a cool looking seven. So that's even better. It's an awesome looking seven. It's the best seven. Every single one of those decks is going to flip in a statistically relevant manner. There you go. Sweet. Oh my god. Although I can't use it because I can't have good deck heat with a normal deck. Oh, yeah. You've got to use your triple red deck.
01:47:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've got two res, no blacks. There you go. So yeah, so information on that, you know, it's in the show notes, lonestarfodown.com slash events. Check it out. It's gonna be a great turnout. I'm excited. It's gonna be great. Again, Brian, thank you so very much. It's been fun. Yeah. Thank you so much, Brian. This is, this is this kind of,
01:48:01
Speaker
big brain topic that, you know, A, I don't want to talk about all the time because my brain hurts now. Yeah. Uh, and, and if anyone wants to ask questions or have me clarify on my thoughts on anything, feel free to post in the episode on the discord and I will gladly get back to you on
01:48:25
Speaker
uh more in-depth thoughts because i'm i know we bounce all over the place on everything uh because it's it's a lot of content um and i don't mind deep diving this is probably one of my favorite topics to talk about yeah oh and if you ever need to get ahold of brian anytime day or night his phone number is 8675 309 um
01:48:50
Speaker
I will change my number today. I got the number. I got the number on the wall. Sweet. All right, seriously. Thanks again. Thank you. And farewell. Thank you. Have a good one.
01:49:05
Speaker
Students of Conflict is brought to you by Top Dog Design. Check out topdogdesign.com for all of your Malifotrain needs. Top Dog Design, 3D printable designs to enhance your tabletop. Students of Conflict is not an official product of Root Miniatures LLC.
01:49:21
Speaker
All intellectual property belonging to weird miniatures is used with permission. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of entities they represent. Any content provided by our guests and or hosts are their opinion and not intended to malign any group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.
01:50:03
Speaker
I enjoy wine though, but not as much as I like scotch. We are recording it looks like. Yes, I hit the button and then we just kept talking because you know what, we.