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Malifaux Core Rule Book
Wyrd Miniatures is proud to announce its character driven skirmish game, Malifaux. The game book is soft covered, with 216 full colored pages inside. Malifaux is dice less, utilizing our eye catching illustrated Fate Deck, you play a unique card based system that encourages tactics, strategy and resource management over the random fall of dice.
Based in an alternate Earth, Malifaux uses gothic, steam punk, Victorian horror with a dose of the wild west to inject fun and depth into the magical lawlessness of a world rife with monsters, necropunks, man machine hybrids, gunslingers, and power-hungry politicos. Actively using character-driven stories to define the world of Malifaux, seek your fortune in this fast paced and brutal 32mm tabletop miniature skirmish game. Assemble your crew and stake your claim!
No longer do you have to trust the fickle fate of a dice roll, in Malifaux you use cards, a Fate Deck, as you lead your Crew to victory with strategy, tactics and resource management, and if that isn’t enough, you can Cheat Fate. Looking for scalability? Malifaux has it. Jump directly into a Scrap with 4 – 6 miniatures, ensuring a quick and brutal fight with each character having unique skills and abilities. Want to escalate it? Take it to a Brawl, bring in additional members of your faction or hire out mercenaries to do your dirty work.
Based in an alternate Earth, Malifaux uses gothic, steam punk, Victorian horror with a dose of the wild west to inject fun and depth into the magical lawlessness of a world rife with monsters, necropunks, man machine hybrids, gunslingers, and power-hungry politicos. Actively using character-driven stories to define the world of Malifaux, seek your fortune in this fast paced and brutal 32mm tabletop miniature skirmish game. Assemble your crew and stake your claim!
No longer do you have to trust the fickle fate of a dice roll, in Malifaux you use cards, a Fate Deck, as you lead your Crew to victory with strategy, tactics and resource management, and if that isn’t enough, you can Cheat Fate. Looking for scalability? Malifaux has it. Jump directly into a Scrap with 4 – 6 miniatures, ensuring a quick and brutal fight with each character having unique skills and abilities. Want to escalate it? Take it to a Brawl, bring in additional members of your faction or hire out mercenaries to do your dirty work.
212 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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September 2, 2011Malifaux is a skirmish level miniatures game with a dark theme. I played this with a gaming group for a few months. The miniatures, and theme were awesome. Many players seemed to get a little frustrated with the slow pace of the game and loooong play time. Online sources claim that this game runs about an hour. Within the group I played in the average game lasted 2-4+ hours.
One big reason for this is the amount of special abilities that each character has. All but the most experienced players find themselves constantly checking and rechecking character cards to see which abilities apply to what's going on at that particular time. It's also crucial that you remember all of the characteristics and abilities of each individual character in your opponents army, or you run the risk of doing (or not doing) something that will cost you dearly. Sure, you can ask your opponent to look at their character cards at any time in the game, but that's another element that tends to bring Malifaux to a grinding halt.
It's not all bad though. Some of the mechanics are great, like the Fate Deck. Combat and challenges are done by drawing from a deck of cards. At all times players have a secret hand of cards that can be strategically used to trump a lousy draw from the deck. I think the game would be a lot better if they found a way to reduce the amount of special abilities to keep things moving more fluidly. I've seen a few non gamers who were really tempted to try this based on how cool the theme is. To that crowd I have to honestly say, don't waste your money. As cool as this game looks, I have to say that it's just too complex to be enjoyable to a non-gamer. To experienced gamers I'd say do some research on this one and play with proxies before investing in it.
One big reason for this is the amount of special abilities that each character has. All but the most experienced players find themselves constantly checking and rechecking character cards to see which abilities apply to what's going on at that particular time. It's also crucial that you remember all of the characteristics and abilities of each individual character in your opponents army, or you run the risk of doing (or not doing) something that will cost you dearly. Sure, you can ask your opponent to look at their character cards at any time in the game, but that's another element that tends to bring Malifaux to a grinding halt.
It's not all bad though. Some of the mechanics are great, like the Fate Deck. Combat and challenges are done by drawing from a deck of cards. At all times players have a secret hand of cards that can be strategically used to trump a lousy draw from the deck. I think the game would be a lot better if they found a way to reduce the amount of special abilities to keep things moving more fluidly. I've seen a few non gamers who were really tempted to try this based on how cool the theme is. To that crowd I have to honestly say, don't waste your money. As cool as this game looks, I have to say that it's just too complex to be enjoyable to a non-gamer. To experienced gamers I'd say do some research on this one and play with proxies before investing in it.
November 26, 2012
While I haven't yet played the game itself, the rules seem solid and very original.
Background story is a masterful mix of a lot of influences, some of which I recognized as: Game Workshop's Mordheim, various H.P. Lovecraft's stories, World of Warcraft, Tim Burton, perhaps His Dark Materials trilogy, perhaps some Stephen King, probably some more. Still, none of these have been ripped off - rather, they have provided an inspiration for something brand new and distinct.
I especially like how the foundations have been laid out and factions in the world of Malifaux envisioned, as they seem to allow for a lot of diverse plots, unique characters and stories to be added as the system grows and develops without breaking internal consistency. Still, the world has a lot of character in itself - it is not at all vague and open ended as some RPGs which aim to allow mixing of eras and styles in this way.
That said, this book is a good read, and probably makes a good war game too.
Background story is a masterful mix of a lot of influences, some of which I recognized as: Game Workshop's Mordheim, various H.P. Lovecraft's stories, World of Warcraft, Tim Burton, perhaps His Dark Materials trilogy, perhaps some Stephen King, probably some more. Still, none of these have been ripped off - rather, they have provided an inspiration for something brand new and distinct.
I especially like how the foundations have been laid out and factions in the world of Malifaux envisioned, as they seem to allow for a lot of diverse plots, unique characters and stories to be added as the system grows and develops without breaking internal consistency. Still, the world has a lot of character in itself - it is not at all vague and open ended as some RPGs which aim to allow mixing of eras and styles in this way.
That said, this book is a good read, and probably makes a good war game too.
September 3, 2010
The game has interesting mechanics that I'm looking forward to trying out. The fiction spread throughout the rules tells an interesting story. The weirdly dark setting is not normally my thing, but the good reputation that the mechanics have gotten finally led me to give it a read.
November 12, 2012
Great fluff and I loved the way it was interspersed with the rules. This book has since become outdated as far as the rules go by the new v1.5 book that came out in late 2012 but I don't know if they carried all the fiction forward or not since I haven't read the new one yet.
October 19, 2009
New game that I ran into at Indy last year.
Its fun to read. Its a blast to play.
Its fun to read. Its a blast to play.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews