Malifaux
Are you willing to risk your soul for a chance at great wealth and power? It's your only weapon in a world rife with monsters, necropunks, man-machine hybrids, gunslingers, and power-hungry politicos. In Malifaux, you lead your Crew in the battle for control of the Breach, a dark portal to a world of limitless magic.
Malifaux is a character-driven 32mm tabletop miniatures game. Players collect, build, and paint models representing the denizens of Malifaux, pitting these models against one another in groups called Crews for control of the precious resource known as Soulstones.
A Crew can contain several different types of models depending on how a player constructs it. Masters can manipulate the course of events in the world around them, changing their own Fates through their control or theft of Soulstones. A variety of fantastic and frightening beings, collectively known as Minions, serve the Master as fodder in his or her machinations.
How well a Crew carries out its leader's Strategy and Schemes determines whether or not it will emerge victorious in an Encounter with an enemy Crew. Strategies represent the Crew's main path to victory, while Schemes are simpler alternate routes to achieve the leader's goals.
Malifaux players use decks of cards called Fate Decks to resolve game events such as attacking and spell-casting. Players can manipulate the cards they play to alter the Duel's outcome. It takes a shrewd leader to effectively utilize a Crew's resources, ensuring he or she always has ready the cards needed to Cheat Fate.
What do I need to get started?
Visit the official gameplay page to learn how to get started. Wyrd Miniatures has put a lot of effort into their dedicated Malifaux site to allow you to explore the game, download useful resources, and participate in community forums.
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User Reviews (4)
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Since miniature games are different from boardgames: I propose ammended rating criteria.
Cost of entry: 9/10 (very cheap to get into)
Construction flexibility: 2/10 (how flexible list construction is)
Brutality: 4/10 (how quickly things die)
Speed: 3/10 (how smooth the game plays for its its size)
Strategy: 7/10 (depth of full game decision making)
Tactics: 3/10
Synergy: 9/10 (game is based strongly on combos and other models)
Luck dependance: 7/10
Interactive: 8/10 (highly interactive between players)
The theme, story and atmosphere runs thick in this game.
The miniatures are not of the best quality in the miniature market, but they are addressing more the casual hobbiest who don’t care to spend lots of time prepping their minis.
The card mechanic is definitely very interesting for action resolutions because its part resource management part limited set of probability. You have a hand size from a deck of cards. The cards are randomly drawn, but once the card is used that card’s value and suit are not available till the next round for the most part.
Now, one of the biggest stigmas of this game is that it’s “unbalanced”. The game is exceedingly asymmetric, with that comes imbalance.
The game is subject to being hijacked by the power gamers, for better or worse. But one of the beauties of the game is the scenario and location synergy.
The game has an almost RPG style of setting up scenarios, objectives, locations, etc., which is for the most part very underutilized as a whole but is the true glory of this game IMO. It affords one of the best campaign and story driven potentials for a miniature game out there. A savy gamer can use this to create some fabulous tournament formats, campaigns to address the massive asymmetry and even compliment it to make for a very rewarding game.
Because the game is still handled for the most part in the traditional tabletop sense, it is governed by the power gamer environment.
The other main issue I have with the game, is the pace and time a game takes for its size. It’s slow. The card mechanic is the biggest culprit to this. The “cheating fate” mechanic is fabulous, but it does slow the action resolution down some. Couple this with triggered actions from the game’s asymmetry and a single model’s activation can be very, very, drawn out to a point that it gums up the cinematic aspect of what is occuring on the table.
A skirmish game set in the World of Malifaux, accessible through “The Breach”, where magic is real through the use of a natural element called a soul stone, and nightmares become reality.
You choose one of five factions that suit you Arcanists, Neverborn, Guild, Outcasts, or Resurectionists, and then fight to control your part of Malifaux, or all of it.
No dice, actions are accomplished through a “fate deck” shuffled and cut every turn. Sometimes fate is on your side, sometimes it is not. Sometimes your master can “cheat fate”, you decide if it is advisable.
The real appeal of Malifuax is the miniatures. Aside form individually packaged, Malifaux factions are packed in a boxed set, five to six miniatures you paint and then use. Zombies, witches, undead *******, dogs, cats, snakes, cowboys, show girls, a mad hatter, even Ninja’s, you decide which to begin the adventure with. Starter boxes are priced around $35-$40 USD, the Basic Rule set is $35USD and the fate decks are $7.50USD, but any normal 52 card deck can be used.
Played in a 3’X3′ area, the basic “brawl” of two starter sets can be finished in about an hour and a half. Factions take turns activating one character per side, once all have been activated the turn is over. Five turns decides the game. . .unless fate steps in.
Malifaux is a product of Wyrd Miniatures, Try it, ask a Henchman!
I got lured in to playing this with friends. It is not my type of game and I will not be playing it again. This does not mean it’s a bad game though. You construct an army and fight other another player’s army. Like many other games of this type it does have a dedicated following throughout the country and you should be able to find opponents. The game and expansions are available at hobby game stores throughout the country and there are tournaments sponsored all the time for those with a more competitive itch.
Cowboys, zombies and carnival people! And they fight using poker cards! This game is sweet!
My cousin (he says stop telling people, im his cousin, doesnt want them to know were from the same jean pool) got this game to try out and maybe paint. so he called me over and we figured it out. It wasnt too hard to play and flipping cards to shoot dudes was cool.
We made battle ground obstacles our of tissue boxes and soda cans. that worked good until i got thirsty and started drinking from one of the trees.
My only complaint is this could use a dark elf group so u know who (DRIZZZT) could show up…