Just finished game 2 of 3 in our fall Malifaux league. There were a lot of new things going on in this game that played well into my crew’s strength and so… I won.
Malifaux is a skirmish game of factions and keywords, strategies and schemes. There’s a deep history to the game, already on its third revision, that tells the tale of a Victorian-era Earth that opens a permanent portal to the alien world of Malifaux, where soulstone magic can and will change you. Every player has one or more crews; crews are led by a Master who belongs to one or more factions, and they have keywords that bind them to other units with a commonality of some sort.
My master is Mei Feng, Foreman. She belongs to both the Arcanist (magic is fun! whee!) and the Ten Thunders (we’re the mafia! wheeee!) factions. Hey keyword is Foundry, so she has common cause with the workers in the giant Malifaux factories. Most of her crew are either partly or entirely mechanical, and all Foundry units can use the Ride the Rails ability to quickly dart around the battlefield.
My opponent played Molly Squidpiddge, a journalist who died and was then later resurrected. She is of the Resurrectionist faction, and her keyword is Forgotten. Her minions are mostly undead, though she has some mechanical minions to hurt or heal at her whim.
In the picture above, my crew is at the bottom left, and my opponent is at the top right.
The league organizer had set the second game with the following settings:
Formation: Flank — the battlefield is split into quarters. The attacker chooses one corner, the opponent the opposite one. Models must be placed within 9″ of the edge of the battlefield, forcing the deployment into a sort of “L” shape.
Strategy: Stuff the Ballots — we are voting for which faction shall rule Malifaux, and so we gain points whenever we have control of more ballot boxes (determined by which faction has more ballots in it) than our opponent. Once there are six ballots total in the box, it is emptied and the ballot box becomes uncontrolled.
Schemes: Power Ritual, Take Prisoner, Information Overload, Death Beds, Hold Up Their Forces. We gain points whenever one of our schemes succeeds. Players choose two from this pool and keep them secret. I chose Power Ritual — drop scheme markers in the far corners of the battlefield, and Information Overload — have more scheme markers on the opponent’s side of the board than they have on yours. My opponent chose Death Beds and Hold Up Their Forces.
Points are not gained by killing enemy units (unless the strategy or scheme says so), but, of course, killing your opponent’s crew inhibits their ability to fulfill their schemes. My first turn focused on getting units headed toward ballot boxes; my crew’s mobility planted a tank unit (Metal Golem) right in the center, and it used that position to take down some of Molly’s weaker units. (But being Resurrectionists, one Came Back).
Move Two we both gained points from ballot stuffing. With my tank units in control of enough boxes, I focused on dropping scheme markers for Information Overload. I was under a little too much battle stress to get too many Power Ritual points, though I did pick up a couple in moves Three and Four. We didn’t finish move Five, as it was clear I could both deny my opponent a couple points from Hold Up Their Forces, while taking control of another ballot box for Stuff the Ballots. I was 5-4 at that time, and we probably would have both gotten two more points after discussion, so we ended it there.
So, I’m not a complete loser… any more.
I’ve committed to playing Mei Feng, Foreman through to the end of the league and the following tournament in October. For winter, though, I am probably moving to December. Ice golems. Pillars of ice. Blizzards. Brrr.
