Playing Malifaux

It’s been a busy summer, and it’s been hard to get time to play games (and when I am playing games, I’m playing Blood Bowl as I’m in a league that has 2 scheduled games a month!). But a good friend is moving across Canada shortly, and he wanted to get some games in before he left forever.

We tend to play 3 player, since there are 3 of us in this group, so I’ve gotten inventive about writing multiplayer scenarios at the end I’ll share the scenario we used.

Arcanists vs Arcanists vs Resurrectionists

Arcanists #1 (me!)

• Rasputina, with Armor of December and Arcane Reservoir. I originally had her with Imbued Energies, but decided I wanted more cards. Armor of December was an inspired choice, and I think it was the difference between losing miserably and winning.
• Ice Golem. I’d originally planned to take the new murderspider/Arcane Emissary, but decided to go with the Ice Golem since it was finished and I didn’t want to start painting a new project…
• December Acolyte. I wanted 2 of them…but again, with the not starting new projects. I took Frame for Murder on this guy because he always dies. And I figured 2 points was good.
• 2xIce Gamin
• Silent One. This model was unpainted…because of not …starting new projects!

Arcanists #2 (Derrick)

• Marcus, with Trail of the Gods and Feral Instinct.
• Myranda with Imbued Energies. Derrick ended up tossing this card for Fast, instead of sac’ing Myranda and getting 4 cards!
• Rogue Necro
• Slate Ridge Mauler. Derrick knows this is a sub-optimal model, but he took it because he’d been told to handicap himself a bit.
• Canine Remains. For Frame for Murder…

Resurrectionists (Duke)

• Seamus, with Red Chapel Killer
• Sybelle
• Copycat Killer
• 3x Belle

Duke pretty much takes the same list every time. It worked out well for him this time! Here’s a photo to break up this text. 🙂

Scenario

The scenario was Mistaken Identity, which I wrote originally for Breaching the Faux. I was pretty happy with how it looked, but I hadn’t had time to playtest it.

There is a 30mm marker in the middle of the table. Any player gets 2VP if they end the game with the marker on one of their models stat cards, and they gain it by taking (1) Interact Actions. If the model dies, it’s placed into base contact before removing the model. If you have 2 models within 3″ of the model with the marker at the end of the game, gain 1VP.

Randomly deal each player an Ace, making sure the Tome is in the pile. The Tome player gets 2VP at the end of the game if no one has seen their Ace. The other players get 1VP if they’ve seen the Tome players card. Whenever you kill a model, flip a card and on a 10+ you get to see the card of the owner of the model.

The Game

Marcus ran at me quickly, I think assuming that he could take me out and deal with Seamus later. Seamus spread out to get Line in the Sand. I…tanked Marcus and tried to kill him while Myranda healed him. I took Frame for Murder (successfully getting the Acolyte killed by Sybelle) and Make Them Suffer. Suffer was harder – I kept killing Minions without Raspy killing them! Marcus lost most of his models around Turn 4. He forced me to put most of my forces into him, then split up a bit and when Seamus came in with his models he lost almost everything.

The Bear picked up the Marker, then died and dropped it, allowing Seamus to pop in and pick it up and then Back Alley out to the far side of the board where he’d be safe with his 2VPs and preventing others from getting 1VP from being close to him.

In the end, I won with 6VP, Duke got second with 5VP and Derrick got 3VPs.

Scenario?

After playing it, I felt that the Tomes player 2VP were too swingy, either getting 2VP easily or requiring them to play defensively to keep it. I also thought that the “end the game within” 1VP was too difficult.

I changed:

• “May” flip. Forcing someone to flip after they’d already seen the players card was weird.
• 10+ -> 9+. Just making it a little easier to get. I also considered allowing people to cheat the flip to give it a little less randomness. I think if you can cheat it, I’d put it back at 10+ or even 11+.
• 1VP for the Tomes player if your card is unrevealed to at least 1 other player. This maintains the “secrets from other players” aspect I really like, but makes it a little less swingy. I imagined a 4 player game being difficult to lose this point.
• I moved that 1VP so that everyone is trying to stand near the Arcane Heart model. It’s just nice to bring people together. 🙂

Here’s the updated version.