Streets paved in hope, Terror at every turn, Malifaux!

Hey guys, Huron here, back in action for my fourth post this week. While I am sure I will not be able to keep up this pace, you can at least count on more regular post from me again. Today's post finds me jumping back into the exciting world of Malifaux. Last October I stopped playing Malifaux as I had found that I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by several factors.

First, book 2 had just been released and the new models were beginning to trickle out and rear their nasty heads on battlefields all across the world. These new models, I felt were much stronger then what I had in my existing collection and the new ways the crews (armies or factions in Malifaux) just played with a stronger and more complex amount of synergy. Only a few new crews had been releases, and none of the new models needed to put the book 1 crews on
an even footing had yet been released, or so that is how I felt. Additionally Malifaux is a game made by gamers, for gamers so while fun, it has lots of little rules inconsistencies that are debated over in the Malifaux rules forum regularly.

One nice thing about Wyrd Miniatures, the company that makes Malifaux is that they are not afraid to go in and fix problems with the rules and change things for the better. This is however a double edged sword, as it means there is a large amount of Errata and Faq a player has to keep up with and rulings can sometimes be changed several times as new situations arise. Causing a player to need to keep up almost daily sometimes to know how to correctly play with some models. I just got overloaded and could not keep up anymore. Malifaux was taking up to much of my energy to play, I'd stopped having fun, so I just stopped playing the game for a while.

So what has changed? Well for starters their is a new mini rulebook on the horizon that promises to be a cheap way to get all the rules for the game in one place, with simplified and tweaked versions of the rules that will make needing to carry around a 19 page Errata and FAQ document no longer necessary. Secondly, Wyrd is releasing new v2 versions of some of the cards that were unclear or who have had significant changes made to how abilities on them work, for free through the mail or in PDF versions available to the public. And finally Bill, my co-host of Gamers Lounge, Wyrd Henchman (think Outrider, Commando, or Pressganger), and all around Malifaux-nut got me a new crew for Christmas from book 2 that I am just about done painting up.

My new crew is for the Guild Faction, the Law in Malifaux. Until recently I have been playing Resurrectionists, the Necromantic faction is Malifaux... though I also have a crew of Mercenaries as well. The crew I was given was Lucius's Crew. Lucius is the right hand man of the Governor of Malifaux, the leader of the Guild and somewhat Dictator of Malifaux. Lucius is the one that "gets things done" for the governor. He leads a crew of special forces operatives and Guild Guardsmen that is at the beck and call of the Governor. Game wise, Lucius is one of a new type of model introduced in Book 2 to Malifaux, a Henchman. Henchman are models with the use soul stone ability that can be purchased by masters to help support their crews or be taken as a sudo-master in their own right. So for 10 soul stones (yes that is a lot) Lucius and be taken as a minion in another masters crew or you can have him form a crew of his own and purchase minion models to work under him instead.

I have only played a few games with Lucius and his crew so far but I like what I see. The box came with Lucius, a Guild Guard Captain, a Guild Guard, the Lawyer, and Ryle. To this I have added 2 more Guild Guards and an Austringer. One of the nice things about this crew is how well it all works together. Once of the current tactics that is popular in Malifaux is called the Alpha Strike (big in 40K right now too). Alpha Striking is when through abilities of your crew you activate most or all of your models right at the beginning of your turn, overwhelming a few of your opponents models and severely injuring or killing them before they get to activate this turn.

The Guild Guard Models have several abilities that allow you to activated multiple models at once, usually only other guild guard but the Captain has companion Master that allows him to activate Lucius and the Austringer has an ability called deliver orders that allows him to have any model with in 24" activate next (assuming it has not already activated this turn) immediately after the Austringer finishes his activation. This allows me to activate pretty much my entire crew in a 35 Soul Stone game on my first activation if I wanted too. This tactic can be devastating when in range of the enemy.

While I am still new to the game again and remembering all the little details Malifaux is at least fun again, for now. I won't know if this going to be the case all the time, but for now I'm okay with that.

Hopefully I will be able to get my Guild Crew painted and finished soon, so I can starting working on other projects. Stay tuned for more new posts next week...