Greetings readers! Whether you’re a Malifaux veteran, or a new player like myself, I hope that my reflections and chronicling my experiences will provide some value to you. My name is David, and here’s the story of how I found Malifaux, and what I learned from my first two games. The next post, highlighting my third game – where I discover the first Master I’ll pick up – should follow sometime next week.

I’ve been blessed this month to have discovered a new game – well, new to me at least. How I’ve gone so long without knowing about there being a local group of players for this game is baffling to me, but I have found the local players to be really open, inviting, and encouraging so far. The game is Malifaux, currently in its third edition, and this is the chronicle of my first forays into this delightful skirmish game.

I’ll start off with an honest confession: the stars really aligned to convince me to check out the game. First, they were advertising demos of the game on Facebook, and the one of demo nights happened to fall on the night I’m usually at my local store in order to play board games, so there was little to lose in giving it a shot for an evening. Second, they were advertising that they may give away a core set to someone who demoed the game over the month of July – certainly, that helps to speed up the entry point into the game if I enjoy it. Third, it was being promoted as an affordable game relative to other miniatures-based skirmish games (something I’m already seeing to be true, as I can get an entire crew for under $100 and would only need to assemble a dozen figures or less). I had always been drawn toward wanting to try Warhammer or something similar, but balked at the sheer cost and the monster task of building and painting everything to simply be able to play. Thus everything was working well to get me to try Malifaux with little downside apart from lost opportunities to play board games – and that would only be for one evening.

I showed up for the first evening, having watched a few videos, looked into masters, and chatted with the person who was going to be running the demo. I gave him a list of a few masters that really interested me, and I ended up running Charles Hoffman for my first game. He’s a pretty tanky guy, which is something that appealed to me as a person who enjoys the Paladin class in RPGs, so it was a good fit for that first game. We played a 35 Soul Stone game, so I was running Hoffman, his Mechanical Attendant, Howard Langston, a pair of Watchers, and a pair of Hunters. He ran a Basse crew against me, which I feel (in hindsight) was a nice match-up for a new player to see some differences in crews without too many gotcha-style tricks to stumble upon. We had a trio of open-information Schemes and Strategies, so we both knew from the start what was necessary in order to score.

It was fun. It was exciting. I had a powerful moment with Langston, just devastating models, only to watch a very clever response by Basse to whittle him away before I could use Langston again. I got to see the power of Armor over time, with my own models being surprisingly painful to pull off the board. I got to witness Basse trickery, and figure out how to optimize positioning to get my licks in on his figures without leaving myself prone (sorry, Langston, but your sacrifice did help!). The game showed me a lot of what it had to offer, and I walked away knowing three things about Malifaux:

  1. The system of cards is far better than rolling any number of dice, and allows far more player agency to accomplish what you are trying to do.
  2. The sheer variety of Masters alone will make this game feel fresh for many, many plays – add in the Schemes/Strategies and you have a game that might be endlessly replayable.
  3. If this person was a glimpse at what the local community is like, it was going to be a great one to join because he was friendly, welcoming, endlessly patient, and willing to talk through a lot of things as they came up.

Two weeks later I had my next chance to make it out to play Malifaux again. This time there were three other people who showed up, and I was paired with another newer player so the experienced ones could get some reps in ahead of a tournament at the end of the month. I understood the reasoning behind that decision although, in hindsight, I think it was probably a poor one for me to agree to. Let’s start with the obvious: there were a few reasons why my second game went poorly for me, almost all of which were beyond my control:

  1. My opponent’s deck was hot for the entire matchup, and mine never once got above being lukewarm. Our final round was the first time I could cheat in a card above value 8, which you’d think would have made my average flip better but it just didn’t average out in my favor.
  2. The terrain placement strongly favored his master, Von Schill. Not only did I not really know what to expect from his crew (nor really know to ask – we were both borrowing crews, so I imagined he would have been as able to answer as effectively as I could have about mine), but I stumbled right into a pair of very early bombardments that slowed me down in the first Turn..
  3. The Schemes and Strategies were not favorable to my Master, either, being centered around controlling areas on the opposing side of the map, dropping tokens next to enemy units, and killing the Master.. Like a dummy, I wanted to try out Colette knowing she was the unusual Arcanist in the faction to see how she operated, and I just didn’t really have a clear idea on how to effectively use Colette or her team.

Regardless of the above issues, the game was fun. It had moments that stunk, such as losing a Dove almost instantly because I didn’t see Von Schill hiding behind a building at the start, and losing Carlos before really getting to do anything with him other than moving. But there were some fun ones, like my Coryphee’s Mannequin replacement getting in a Slow and Distracted on Arik to suck out his action efficiency. Or a pair of Doves getting revenge on Von Schill, tying him down for nearly three full rounds and taking down almost half of his health before self-destructing. And Colette blowing up my opponent’s Trunk to hit three of their units with a blast while burying herself to avoid taking any damage.

Even in the brutal loss, I learned some important lessons that will allow me to play this team a little more effectively next time:

  1. Don’t rush further forward than necessary with your early activations unless you’re prepared to lose them, or you know the opposing team cannot target them easily. The Armor on Hoffman’s team made me a little less cautious, and it hurt me in this one.
  2. Understand, at least at a high level, what the opposing team is capable of doing so you don’t get blindsided. Also, pay attention to their deployment.
  3. Interact is an important action: remember it exists, and learn any other actions that you can do that are NOT listed on the model’s cards.
  4. Don’t forget to spend Soul Stones! I spent none of them, and certainly should have done so for my hand, flips, or damage reduction to my Master.
  5. Understand the basics of the game better. Not only to ensure I know how to play my own turns, but to also know when to question whether someone’s interpretation is correct. I now understand that my opponent ignored one rule and misplayed another, both of which I am certain were unintentional but only compounded his own advantage. Shame on me for not knowing to be able to question.
  6. Understand ALL of the abilities of my Master, at the very least. Presto Chango is apparently a really nice ability that I didn’t try to use a single time because I didn’t really understand how it could be beneficial outside of fringe situations.
  7. Make sure to do all activations. My opening Mannequin moved along with Cassandra, which was right. But I then assumed I had already activated the Mannequin and could have done something with it that first turn.

I’ll hopefully be getting a new game played sometime later this week, and at least making an appearance to say hello to more folks during the local tournament this coming weekend. So far I’m having a blast, and since I’m living on borrowed models, I’m excited to see what Master and team I’ll get to run next – whether someone new or one that I already have tried out. And that’s part of the process here, not only learning how to play the game and what I want to run, but also seeing what other teams there are and what they are capable of doing so I’ll gladly take whatever is put on the table in front of me.

Which leads to my closing question:

If a new player came to your local group and wanted to learn to play across three sessions, and was willing to try any Masters you put in front of them, what three Masters would you choose for them to play in those three games to get a taste of the depth and variety that Malifaux has to offer? Why those three? Leave a comment down below and let me know! You never know, I might just check with my local group to see if they have those Masters for me to borrow and test out and report back on how those games went…