Malifaux- My Thoughts

Hi again all! Keeping the theme of other recent posts, I've put together my general thoughts on Malifaux, a game that I have played for the past 4 years quite heavily. You'll find below pictures of a few of my painted keywords, and for a few of them links to tacticas that I have written. 

Von Schill and the Freikorps

The game of Malifaux has a really great setting in my opinion, and it is this that drew me to the game in the first place. It is an alternate history Weird West/Gothic type game with almost any kind of character archetype you can think of in it- you have military units and mercenaries, crime syndicates, gunslingers, Lovecraftian monsters, demon-esque creatures and necromancers to name some of the most prevalent things in the game. Malifaux itself is an alternate dimension that is connected to Earth via a giant portal known as the Breach, through which colonists and criminals alike are sent to this new frontier to make a living. The totalitarian Guild enforces the law Breachside and manages travel through the Breach, while other powers act to undermine them and carve out their own little niches. The game itself focuses on specific powerful individuals in the world, known in-game as Masters, and the groups that follow them while they work to achieve their goals. For some it is complete domination of Malifaux and beyond, while others have simpler goals like maintaining a fragile peace, saving their homeland from imperialist humans or simply making as much money as possible.

Tara's Obliteration Keyword

The game itself is played on a 3x3 table and uses a fairly heavy amount of terrain (officially 30-50% of the table should be covered, the sweet spot sitting at around 35-40) but the main draw is the complete lack of dice other than maybe to track things like wounds. It instead uses cards, and is mainly a stat+flip system. This means a lot more variance than dice, and leads to 2 kinds of duels, opposed and simple, that work slightly differently but still overall the same way. Simple duels you simply need your stat+flip to equal or beat a target number to succeed, and are mostly things that either summon new models or buff your own things (although models can force enemies to take simple duels for things like Terrifying or Shockwaves). Opposed duels are just that, opposed, and involve both sides flipping cards and adding stats (both the action stat and the opponent's resist stat to use will be written on the specific action you're using) and are mostly attack or debuff based. The difference in the final duel totals determines how you then flip for damage if successful, with greater chances of higher damage coming from greater differences. Damage works off of a 3 stage track with certain levels of cards corresponding to higher damage (weak, moderate and severe) with the Jokers as extremes on each end (black joker is always 0 damage, red is severe+1, although the black must always be taken if flipped).

The Viktorias and their Mercenary cohort

The other big aspect of the card system is through cheating, and how it acts to reduce the variance of card flips. Each player has a hand of 6 cards, which is drawn at the beginning of each turn and can be modified through special rules, that they can use to either replace flipped cards ("cheating") or to resolve abilities that require cards to be discarded. A big part of the game is also in forcing the opponent to discard cards, with many control-based models tearing through opponents' hands. This, as well as other modifiers, stops an opponent from cheating (because they've got no cards) and leaves them at the whim of the deck so they are forced to use whatever they happen to flip. It's a great part of the game because hand management is so important, and even if you have a hand of all low cards you can still use it for discard effects and you still guarantee you don't flip them during the turn.

Ophelia and her Kin

The scoring system in Malifaux is also very often detached from simply killing the opponent, and has a scenario mechanic that I really love in how variable and interesting it can be. The cards flipped for attacker and defender also determine the deployment and what is known as a Strategy, with the players' cards' suits deciding these. Deployment is self-explanatory, there are 4 types of deployment that affect how crews will function, while the Strategy is a kind of scenario that both players will be working towards. Some revolve more around killing enemies while others are focused around zone control and claiming markers in specific positions, so the 4 Strategies bring a lot of difference in how you will play to achieve them (and because you build crews after Strategy and Schemes are decided, you can build towards scoring them). The second system of scoring is through Schemes, which are decided by flipping 5 cards and checking their numbers. Although 5 are given, players can only choose 2 to work towards for their points, so it is both a game of choosing the Schemes you are best suited towards doing but also because these are secret until scored you have the added mind game of trying to play around your opponent. This balance of trying to score your own while not trying to make it too obvious to counter and also trying to guess what your opponent is doing and stop them is something I really love and adds a whole extra dimension to the game. The fact that 13 Schemes and 4 Strategies exist leads to a huge amount of variance in any given game, and I love how you will almost always have to adapt lists to the specific permutation of both scenario and the opponent's leader to judge what they are trying to accomplish.

Parker Barrows and the Barrows Gang

Malifaux works on an AP system in how you use models, with every model except your leader (and every master you hire) having 2AP. Masters and Leaders get 3, and there is a generic list of fairly generic actions like walk and charge but also things that are more game-specific like interact (where you interact with something on the table to work with your scenario). Other than that each model has specific actions on their stat cards that will tell you how they work and what they can do so it's all in a fairly easy place at the side of the table to reference. The system can be controlled by certain crews (adding/reducing AP from models to change the flow of the game, locking things in combat with chaff so they waste AP) and managing your AP and model count is very important.

Jack Daw and the Tormented

A couple of the other important parts of the game are keywords and soulstones. Keywords are how you hire your crew, with the crew's keyword matching that of your leader, and in general you will have far better crew synergies in keyword than out so you will want a decent amount of keyword models for almost every master (some will want the full list, others only a couple). The keyword system also allows for hiring at the printed model cost, because all other models in-faction will come at a +1 cost for being out of keyword unless they are Versatile (think faction generic stuff). It also allows hiring out of faction, as anything that shares a keyword with your leader can be hired regardless of faction and thus opens up some more options and "gateway drugs" people into new crews and new factions through shared models (I've certainly fallen for it big time). Soulstones are only able to be used by the more powerful models in your crew rank-wise, and come from your leftover points after building a list (capped at 10). These can be used to add suits to duels, give bonuses for your duels or negatives to your opponent and to reduce incoming damage and as such are usually a really important part of your game plan. Depending on the crew you may need only 1 or 2 because you can generate more, or you take a crew that wants upwards of 6-7 stones to run at their strongest but this depends on a lot of variables.

Misaki's Last Blossom

The biggest thing you will notice about a game of Malifaux is the amount of markers. These are used to track wounds and conditions like any other game (dice are fine here) but also different kinds of markers affect the game in different ways. Some models can create special kinds of markers for their crew that act as terrain (the various pyromancers create pyre markers, Titania and her Fae create Underbrush) or have other special effects (blown apart markers destroying nearby cover), corpses and scrap appear when models die (and can be used by other models for their effects) and in general markers will be very common on the table as a game progresses. The most important though is the scheme marker, which at their simplest allow you to score points when placed in the right places and play to your schemes. They are easily the most important and most universal type of marker (everyone has to place schemes at some point) and as such every Malifaux player should use them.

 

In general, Malifaux is a game I really love to play and is super deep and engaging. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in trying it out, although keep in mind “I only need one crew to play” is almost always a lie and you will end up with way more crews than you expected to have. That tends to just be a fact of the game, and is by no means a bad thing because it means you have a far more interesting experience in the long term.