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 4th
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;
And even better is that the full rulebook is available for
download from Wyrd as well as full stat cards for the current range;
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