Malifaux titbits

With folks carrying around brand new copies of the new Malifaux book, Twisted Fates we are starting to get all manner of snippets appearing on forums and tweets. Many of these are showing up on the Wyrd forums and I thought I would bring them here to you.

Firstly quoting wrabbit37… Avatar Lilith

Her cast goes up by 1, her defense drops by 2. She loses the sword but has paired claws (2/4/5) and a ranged attack called Thorny Vines.

She has armor, keeps Black Blood, and gets blood when stuff near her and in forests gets killed. She's still got Drain Blood too, and Blood From Stone. She can make claw attacks at people near the forest she's in, and she can make Thorny Vines attacks at people near any forest.

All friendly non-Unique Nephilim get Wicked. She keeps Fast, Master of Malifaux, Rush of Magic and Wicked herself.

She can ditch a blood counter to, as a (1) action, attack everyone in a forest with her and move herself. She can also engage in a WP duel with someone in a forest near her to cause damage to them and stop them from moving.

Her claws have the same trigger as her sword before. The thorns have a trigger that pushes the model towards her. She loses Invisibility, but has a different trigger that she auto-succeeds in that if she's missed in melee, she pushes 3" ignoring terrain.

She has Earthquake still, and three other spells. One makes a forest bigger by ditching blood. One is similar to Translocation except it requires the targets to be in forests, and the last is a (2) action that costs a blood token that forces every enemy in or near a forest to succeed in a high DF check or take wounds, and if they die, she gets blood.

Manifest requirements:
10 wounds to enemy models in base contact with woods.
Cast Illusionary Forest twice in two different turns.

When she manifests, in addition to everything everyone else does, she drops three 3" forest templates around the board.

Next, from the same source, let’s take a look at… Avatar Seamus

His Defense drops (if it can be believed) though his wounds remain the same. He loses Hard to Wound bit keeps Hard to Kill. He gains Regeneration 2, and his Terrifying now affects all enemy models that don’t have Anathema themselves, regardless of whether they can be terrified normally (even Constructs run from him!). Whenever something around him fails a morale duel, he heals. When he’s in melee, he’s got Armor +2. He’s Wicked and his Mark gives all models in his army Terrifying +1, or Terrifying 12 if they’re not already Terrifying.

He’s still fast.

He has huge fists that ignore armor and hit hard! He can also chuck corpses around, though he needs corpse tokens to do so. He has two triggers on his fists, one that triggers a morale duel on the defender and another that triggers a DF duel on the defender – fail and be paralyzed, pass and just be slowed. The Corpse has a trigger that creates a morale duel too.

He can continually permanently increase his Terrifying at the cost of his own Willpower. He has a (1) action that makes all models within 4” of him perform WP->13 morale duels. And he has another (1) action that gives all enemies within 10” of him -2 WP.

He has a few spells – a (0) that increases his combat prowess (but requires a Ram), and then a (1) that paralyzes target model (8 Crow required) and another that gives him a healing flip with a Ram.

His manifest requirements are that he successfully cast Face of Death twice, and that he use Slit Jugular against an enemy model that he charged using No Escape.

Next, let’s take a look at what is in the new Twisted Fates book by way of minions.

We have a total of 30 new minions, 6 per faction, including 6 effigy dolls, again 1 per faction all of which are usable by the Neverborn. There is 2 new Family models for the guild. 1 is a generic family member who I think is Rare 2. The other family member is a renegade family member that will only work for the Neverborn. My Friend said that they kidnapped and brainwashed him into hating the rest of the Family.

Astoundingly it turns out that the big fellow with all the arms and legs merging into one construct is actually a suped up Flesh Construct available to McMourning’s Avatar, not Leviticus at all. Leviticus is more along the lines of a 5th Horseman of the Apocalypse. This makes more sense. As to McMourning's avatar, he can summon the new Construct with 6 body parts but needs a Flesh Construct on the table at the time. Manifesting could be a problem though as he needs to gather 5 body parts from ENEMY models which in some cases will not be posible. The 2nd option is to kill an enemy suffering from Rancid Transplant so watch you defend against it lest you want something very big in your midst!

Dead doxy is a new Belle. I got a brief description of abilities, but I can confirm Seamus can summon them with Arise my sweet, and they are rare 2. There is also a unique embalmer character to run around with McMourning. Friend with book says he can stop Lady Justice and others from completely destroying corpses. No additional details. Marcus is getting a bear model that apparently gets meaner and stronger with each wound it takes. It’s good to hear he’s getting some love that’s for sure. Other Arcanist notes are that there will be a new 5ss Showgirl called the Mistress of Ceremonies.

The Outcasts are getting a mercenary called… A boy named Sue. Seriously. At least Wyrd has a sense of humor. Plus McTavish who is a mercenary gator tamer who will work for Gremlins, but isn't a gremlin. His attack is him siccing his gator on you. Gremlins also get a new unique gremlin. Hgt 3. He's based on Lenny from Of Mice and Men. He has a ranged attack where he swats a piglet at his opponent with his big stick. He also has the dumb rule that Flesh Constructs have.

And that’s about it for now. Keep your eyes peeled though. Gencon is far from over!

Wyrd thoughts

With all this talk of Gencon I thought I’d revisit and add to my earlier thoughts when I wrote up a review of Malifaux based on what I had seen and heard from the outside. Now, though still fairly new to Malifaux (a few months now), I have completely fallen in love with the game and Wyrd, the company that develops it having not touched my GW models for what seems like an age.

The plus side for me, aside from the models which are beautiful and the rules which are innovative, is the setting. Most games fall into a cliche. Post Apocalypse, High Fantasy, D&D esq, Elves in Space, Classic Sci Fi, etc. Even Steampunk and Cyberpunk are getting their share of the limelight these days however Malifaux manages to be different.

Combining creepy babies, demons, zombies, zombie hookers, French showgirls, wild west, Victorian England, steampunk, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Witch hunters, Anime, creatures from the Island of Doctor Moreau and a little boys nightmares... all into one fluid setting with enough coherency to actually have some pretty rock solid fanfic developing is quite an achievement.

The other major draw for me is that most games while they have different armies all play in a fairly similar manner dependant on the game system. Yes some are more assault to other's gun line, some more magic to others more physical however the patterns are easy to see and due to cost and army size once you invest your committed to that path. Malifaux on the other hand allows such a huge variation of play styles you just never end up in that kind of a constraint and if you want a complete change it’s not that expensive.

Many people have multiple Masters, simply because we can! So in summary, unique setting and varied game play combined with great models, solid rules and a cheap entry point.

The downside if there is one is that the rules, while being recently consolidated into one book though errata’s and FAQ’s are not always simple to locate, are a little encouraging to rules lawyers. Most games aim to have a “spirit of the law” approach. Some players will look for loopholes in wording but they are shunned and the companies try to emphasize the spirit over the letter. Malifaux though kind of forces upon itself the letter of the law. Read any tactica, listen to any podcast, read the forums or just interact with players and you quickly come across situations where the difference between does damage and does wounds is huge. The difference between summoned and placed is a massive deal. While in the English language two words may have the exact same meaning, the choice of word will completely change how that rule or that model interacts with others.

This focus on the letter of the rules has not, to my knowledge, caused any serious game issues beyond confusion to newbies (easily rectified) yet however if Wyrd slips on their proof reading there is the potential that it might. Thankfully to date they have been very proactive in working with the community to make changes. The downside of course is that if a model comes out in a book, then is updated for the card (as many are) that rather diminishes the value of the rule book making it almost feel like a beta test document.

An example here would be the Avatar’s that are coming out prerelease at Gencon and in the latest book Twisting Fates. Might we see V2 cards come out later when the models go officially on sale leaving those with the book or the early released models out on a limb.

Overall though these are mild criticisms for what is an amazing and addictive game.

Early Gencon Pics

My spies at Gencon are starting to see activity...

New Spartan Previews

Just when you thouht it was safe to focus on Gencon, look what we get!

I'm back just in time for Gencon!

So it’s been one hell of a week. As I alluded to recently I was due to move house on Friday. This is the reason for my apparent absence this past week. Well after packing up everything my wife and I own and transporting fair portion of it to our new home the entire move fell through. I don’t want to go into the details on a public forum however suffice it to say I had a lot of back peddling to do and now, having gone through all the work of a move, I find myself where I started with a lot of unpacking to do.

Anyway now that you all feel my pain, let’s look at what I missed this past week! Gencon is really hearting up with doors opening Thursday and model releases are tumbling from the heavens. Clearly you will all be well aware of the myriad Wyrd offerings, but also of note is the release of Dark Age. They will be selling their two rulebooks (nice hardback editions) comprising of rulebook and force or army lists. At a price point of $20 each these are great deal’s and if you buy both you get $20 off of a starter box. You really can’t ask any better than that, especially as the game system itself is really fun. If your there check them out at the Cool Mini or Not stand, after all you know you’ll be in the area checking out bases and the like anyway.

Other things of note that I’m looking forward to my spies sending me pictures of would be the new game Leviathan. Similar to Dystopian wars it’s a steam punk themed naval game, except all the ships fly! Litco will hopefully be releasing a bunch of tasty templates, though their Malifaux offerings (counters for body parts, blood tokens and corpse counters) are scary expensive from over $1 to over $2 per poker chip sized counter! It’s not like the artwork on them is even that great…

Finally I’m hoping someone kind and generous relays back to me information on something new and fresh. We as gamers are always looking for the next new shiny toy and while my hands are full with 40k, Malifaux, Warmachine, and Dark Age, as well as board games, puppet wars and similar related oddities Gencon really is the bringer of wonders and I always at this time of year wonder what it is, that we knew nothing about but will all be talking come Autumn.

Keep your eyes peels, I’m hoping this will be a thrilling week of gamer voyeurism (oh what a shame I can’t be there in person!).