Terrain

So after much rearranging of time and location I got my weekly fix of Malifaux on Saturday evening. So after transporting a full car of peeps (5 The evening raised one big issue for me. Whilst I was winning what was a war of movement in my game (playing Zoraida for the first time against Leveticus)I could not take my eyes of the tables the way the games where flowing and the effect of a lack of terrain was having on the games.

TERRAIN.

Such an important part of Malifaux. More so than most other tabletop games I have experience of. Malifaux players will quickly tell you that you can play this game without attacking making the most of the table and grabbing objectives or carefully positioning your models to make the most of their strengths or minimise their weaknesses.

 With games played on 3x3 tables requiring between 15 to 25 terrain pieces to make it playable. Watching a game happen beside me with 6 terrain pieces it became quickly clear how bad this game played on tables not bristling with terrain. More obvious since I have often had the pleasure of playing at Lisburn Gaming club and its bountiful Mordheim terrain and Arkham Gaming centre which boasts some wonderful terrain. Such games are just eye candy fully painted crews weaving in and out of wonderful terrain. Wargaming Heaven.

So back to my dilemma I need more terrain Saturday night made it obvious. And alas a few books covered by some green cloth just ain’t going to cut it. So work has begun on two themed boards being done just for malifaux. A Bayou settlement, and a wild west excavation site. So keep checking in for some work in progress pics over the coming months as I hope to have both tables ready for June. BIg task and since I have limited experience in making terrain it will be a massive learning curve.

A week of twisted fates

Saturday morning and a good time to reflect on a some of the games of the previous week.

Now being the master of preparation that I am. I was all set for my two games on Thursday night to keep a good track of what happened, models, strategy schemes etc. So brought the camera notebook etc everything but a pen. Classic. So for this Week you shall have to make do with what I can remember from the games.

First Game Guild (me) vs Arcanist (Johnny Nicholls)

At Arkham

We went for a 30 ss game.

So I went for;

Perdita (Master)

Francisco Ortega, Santiag Ortega, Papa Loco, Death Marshal, Judge. And left me with 3 Soulstones.

The Arcanists

Collette Du Bois (Master)

2 Coryphee, Cassandra, 3 doves and a lot of soulstones.

Strategies I got Slaughter, Johnny flipped Turf War. I decared both my schemes of Bodyguard (Perdita) and Grudge (Cassandra). Johnny undecalred was perfect performance and bodyguard.

The game really was a game of two half after initial manuevering around the centre of the table the arcanist where looking likely for the game. The Papa Loco had been obeyed early in the game and made straight for Collette only for Dissapearing act shenannigans to insue, everytime he got close he was buried and placed the full 6 inches away. The downside to this was it taking up one of Collettes actions each turn to keep the mad bomber at bay. I had played the Judge and Marshal to one side of my deployment area to harass any possible flanking moves or to counter any undeclared schemes that johnny may or may not of had. This backfired with both models dying early.However the attack to finish them off left the coryphee and cassandra exposed to the Ortega who closed the distance on them. Using ober to move Santiago into range. Hoping to repeat the success of the previous turn the coryphee and Cassandra tried to close the distance to Perdita trying to remove the threat, by the end of the turn the 2 Coryphee and cassandralay dead to Ortega Gunfire. Santiago can be devastating if models are left exposed to rapid fire. What followed was the surrounding and final death of Collette over the next two turns.

Got two more games this week the second game on Thursday night against Johnny He ran the same crew I switched out perdita for Lady Justice and a Scales of justice instead of a Death Marshal. The game was far closer with Johnny winning 6-4 on VP’s which was misleading as the game ended with the only two models on the table being the Scales of Justice and Collette. The talking point came in the last turn collette won initiative and attacked my judge in combat and killed him. Looking at my hand I had a trigger card ready to cast Blades and Bullets as my final action for the Judge’s slow to die ability. Collette was on 5 wounds with only a single soulstone left. With the trigger card to cast the spell and the red joker in my hand I thought I was in with a chance and went to cast the spell and promptly flipped the Black Joker. Fate is twisted.

Final game was against Andy at Lisburn Gaming club. Again 30 ss and I ran Perdita again this time against Rasputina. The game was a refresher for Andy who has not played in a while but it did not show. My guns proved useless against the amount of blocking terrain on the table and the ice walls being carefully placed to maximise the protection to his crew. Had a chance to assasinate Rasputina on turn three with the combined firepower of three Ortegas including Perdita but a lot of weak damage flips and soulstones being burned to prevent damage saw rasputina walk away. The game ended with me tabled and Andy having a 4-0 victory. The game was highly enjoyable. The tactics used against me were sound and effective leading me to think of doing a piece on the some of the strange tactics employed by the various masters. Hence the reason I am not going into greater detail here.

Feedback always welcome.

Cheating Fate

Well their seems to be blogs popping up everywhere and for everything. Might as well gate crash and get in on the act. Mostly focusing on my main love at the moment Malifaux. A game which so eloquently combines my two favourite things a miniature wargame and card game. Also time permitting I ll spend some time on other pet projects sitting on my painting desk namely in the form of a new 4^th Armoured Canadian Recce army for Flames of War. So hopefully start getting some more blogs written and some pictures of models and game reports posted.

What first drew me to the game was the imagery. Malifaux uses Gothic, Steampunk, Victorian Horror with a big dose of the Wild West. And delivers this with a skirimish game which is highly character driven. And of course the minis are just gorgeous.

Being a skirmish game crew sizes will mostly vary between 5-9 models. With each crew containing a master and various minions. What makes this game interesting is the Fate Deck Mechanic. Now as most wargamers know dice fairly well and especially games using d6 and of the 2d6 probability curve. Malifaux does something different by using a deck of cards. Based on a standard set of household playing cards the decks has four suits ace to king and two jokers. So instead of rolling for a score, players will flip a card and add the corresponding card value to the appropiate stat of their miniature.

This result however can be changed in a number of ways. As the games slogan goes ‘Cheat Fate or Die’.

First of is the use of soulstones. Each crew will have a soulstone pool which can be used to flip an extra card during a duel. So instead of flipping one card and adding the appropiate stat you would flip an extra card adding the scores from both cards to the stats. Secondly at the beginning of each turn each player will draw a control hand. From this hand players will be allowed to cheat fate on duel flips, by replacing the card flipped from their deck with one from their hand. 

Then there are the Jokers, one red, one black. The red joker is purely positive, it counts as a 14 on flips and when doing damage lets you flip an extra card. When flipped for preventing damage it stop all damage. This is the card you really went to see come up. And often. More interesting however is the black joker, the manifestation of bad luck in a game. This is Malifaux and bad things happen, on most flips it counts as zero and in others as an automatic failure. This can be a game changer and can turn a fight on it head, but with the Fate Deck mechanic such flips are rare.

These elements add a lot of strategic thought to most actions and careful use of both the soulstone pool and your hand is key to doing well. Naturally this is a very basic rundown of the core mechanic. as in many games on the market playing the game is the best way to see the mechanic in action. 

This is a game for people who like a tactic heavy game, the rules are quick and easy to pick up. The more games you play however the more you truely start to understand the depth of the game.

Next Up Getting to Grips with Malifauxs law enforcement The Guild

For more details check out;

 www.malifaux.com/Gameplay.php

And even better is that the full rulebook is available for download from Wyrd as well as full stat cards for the current range;

www.malifaux.com/Rules.php