Malifaux – The second game

So last night I played my second game of malifaux, and I have to say that if I wasn’t hooked before, I definatly am now!

On Monday, sometime in the early afternoon I ordered the Viktorias Box set, and also a set of ronin to make my first crew, I wanted to do the viktorias, but the basic box is quite popular, so I thought I would do something a little different, and add in the ronin. I thought I was being quite individual by doing this, and was quite chuffed when I thought of it, until I was informed (after they arrived) that its actually quite a common combo. Oh well, at least I know I have a decent crew at least!

I ordered these sets from Wayland games, but I got them from their ebay store, not their website. They seem, for whatever reason to be much faster if you order off their ebay store, and, you get feedback, so my advice is to order from their ebay store. So, I ordered monday, and I received them on wednesday, which is awesome! thats the level of service I like. very pleased with that!

So they arrived wednesday, and I had arranged a game with one of the lads at the club (elazar the glorified, see his wargaming blog HERE), He too has also fallen for Malifaux in a big way, along with a few other members of our club, but he has been playing it a bit longer than me, so he offered to give me a game, we’d intended on me using one of his crews (as I hadn’t expected wayland’s service to be so swift!), but as my crew had arrived, he kindy let me use my own, which I had had time to affix to bases, and so it was the “silver surfer” viktoria crew was ready for action! (albeit minus a few arms/weapons..)

As it was only my second game, we opted to ignore the strategies (i may get some terms wrong here as I am only a n00b), the ones you have to announce or keep to your selves anyway, those, we opted not to use them, and instead just added in the “mission”, Elazar ran me through the ones we flipped for and explained how they worked, he got the one where he got extra VP’s depending on if my master(s) were on his side of the table or not at the end of the encounter (I can’t remember it in its entirety), and I got the treasure hunt one, so one treasure marker placed in the middle of the board.

Although Elazar has played more games than me, his knowledge of his own crew would contribute to his downfall (<–thats a hint to what happened!), I had only read through my characters special rules a couple of times, but luckily for me, most of my guys were the same, so I only had to learn a few rules, Elazar on the other hand chose Leviticus, who’s crew is all different, and has a boatload of special rules!

The game is supposed to be played on a 3′ x 3′ table, but at our gaming club we can only really make up (at the moment) 4′ x 4′ tables easily, so we extend the deployment areas, to make the extra room we have redundant, I won the flip for deployment, and just basically whacked my models on the table, Elazar did the same and then we started, The first turn was pretty much a walkfest, no one had anything that could do much at range, so we spent the first set of activations walking towards each other, this went pretty quickly, and only the viktorias have companion (which I didn’t find out about until about turn 3!) out of both of our crews, so the game went pretty much as it is intended too, unlike my first game where my crew all had companion, and Andy’s had companion and reactivate. which kinda throws the game out of sync a little (its intended purpose), but this game played out pretty much as the basic rules intend it to.

We played a 25 soulstone game, which meant that I got to use the majority of my miniatures.
As I said before, I bought the extra ronin to add to my crew so it wasn’t an “off the shelf” crew,  in this game I used all three ronin, Taelor (or chebs, as she is now known), and Obviously the Viktorias as my master(s), this gave me 2 soulstones left over to use in the game.

The models are beautiful sculpts, however, Johan just does nothing for me, I think he’s awful, I doubt very much he will ever make it into one of my crews, and in a 25 soulstone game, Bishop is far too expensive (however he is probably the nicest model of all the henchmen).
The Viktorias themselves are what attracted me to this crew, I love the style of the models, it should make me think of Final fantasy, but they mainly make me think of Japanese gangster type comics and films, which I also like, so thats what really drew me to them. While the sculpts are absolutely beautiful, the swords on one of the Viktorias are going to be a nightmare to glue on, with any hope of them staying glued on for any length of time. I’m also a little confused why she is holding two swords, then has two swords in scabbards on her back, surely it would have made more sense for those to be empty?

So anyway, again, no run down turn by turn of what happened, I will eventually, when we have better Malifaux scenery, and when we have painted crews, get a proper battle report up on here, with less mindless nonsense, and more actual battle reporting, but until then, its just long winded blog posts I’m afraid.

After the first turn things started to get interesting, Elazar’s crew are strange in the way that a couple of the members cause damage on themselves when performing actions, even simple walk actions, but Leviticus can resurrect himself, which is pretty cool, however, its also quite annoying for the opponent!

Taelor, unfortunatly didn’t last very long, being blown up very early on in the game by some spells, so I never got to use her other than to walk forward a couple of times, as a purely close combat character thats all she could do, other than hide and wait (but who wants to do that?!).

The viktorias have a pretty cool ability which means that they can swap places with each other for one action point, I used this quite a lot in the game, combining this with companion means that that can be pretty effective, near the end of the game I charged One viktoria into combat, she failed to kill her opponent, so I activated the other Viktoria and then swapped places with the one in combat, I didn’t get the positive flip for charging, but it meant that I got another attack basically for free, as she shouldn’t really have been in range to charge otherwise.

Another neat little skill the crew has is the ronin, they have the action “run through”, combined with melee expert, this meant that I got the chance to kill a steampunk abomination, then use my “run through” to move 6″, then use my final melee action (from Melee expert) to attack and kill Leviticus. Killing two characters, 6″ apart in one turn, which was pretty cool!

By the end of the game I managed to wipe out all of Elazar’s crew, so I pretty much won by default, as for the Victory points, neither of us got any, but I’m pretty sure a wipeout still classes as a victory!

It was pretty difficult to keep track of all the special rules, but really, Its only been my second game, so after a few more, and after I have used this crew a few times I am sure that they will become second nature. The game would probably have gone a bit different too if we play it again in a couple of months, Elazar has only just got his crew (although he knows the rules quite well), so the special rules for his guys were a bit fuzzy too, we missed out a few things, like me not remembering I had companion until about turn three, and Elazar forgetting his ability to cause an area effect type damage with a couple of his characters, which could have done some serious damage to my ronin.

I learned a great deal from the game, and I have to say that I am really enjoying it. Its very refreshing to play a new game, especially a very good one like this, and even more so when it is so different to the ones you have played in the past.

I cant wait to get my crew built up and at least start to paint it (I have a very large number of partly painted minis, but a very very small number of completely painted ones!!), ad also to get a few more games of Malifaux in over the next few weeks. Hopefully I will keep learning new things, and enjoy this system just as much as I enjoy Flames of war.

Unfortunately, I enjoyed this game so much that when I got home, I went online and ordered my second crew (I haven’t even glued the first one yet!), The Lady Justice Box, with an added Executioner, just for variety, I also have plans on my third crew, but they can wait a bit.