MALIFAUX MUSINGS - First Contact
Written By: Jay Edwards
I just finished my first game of 4E and I need to type out thoughts. The biggest thing that I’m feeling is that I love this edition already, and we’re just in the Beta! The game felt very similar to 3E, but with a lot less pointless housekeeping and useless flips. It was a lot quicker too; a learning game at 30 Soulstones only took 2ish hours and we only needed to refer to the comp rules once or twice. Everything felt the same as before, just… better.
The game today was against Peter’s Bandit crew. Peter is an excellent player and one of the top players in the province, so I knew that things wouldn’t be a walk in the park. Our deployment was Corners, our Strategy was Collapsing Mines and we decided to play with our Schemes revealed to help each other learn Here is how our crews broke down:
Starting with 4 Soulstones each, we pretty much started on the same footing for resources. My list looks weird in retrospect, but I’ll be honest - I just wanted to try out all the big toys. I figured that a learning game would give me the flex to learn from my mistakes with using them, but boy that didn’t happen! Oh, and one quick thing to note about how our local group plays - we give Masters 3 actions regardless of Soulstone level. We just find it’s more fun that way since we rarely play below 50 Soulstone, so Masters in this match have 3 actions.
First thing I learned about 4E - Wounds do not guarantee your safety. Your models are squishy meatbags that take damage and die easily. Even your Masters die fast in 4E, so being able to just throw something downrange and shrug everything off isn’t as viable an option as it was in 3E. In turn 2, I moved Kirai to help accomplish a Scheme and drop a Goryo in the middle of the table but the Bandits had other opinions on that. Sue pulled out his guitar, spent a stone to get a free shot off on Kirai for 2 damage after my damage reduction. Then he sauntered up, pulled out his pistol, aimed… and took 7 wounds off Kirai. In one shot. Half her wounds, gone in one shot, bringing her to 4 wounds. To rub salt in the wound, Sue used his signature action to hold Kirai up and got back the stone he just used. Kirai tried to run away, but Parker cornered her and shot her to death in a back alley, fitting for a Bandit. That was all on the second turn.
The next big thing is that the extra terrain is huge and makes the game feel a lot more alive. In 3E, most games that I played were basically two dimensional because being up higher didn’t have much benefit. Now, with more terrain and schemes that actually care about tall terrain, being on different levels matters a lot more. 2 of the 4 schemes I had cared about being on top of things, so my models were often on rooftops and attacking at range, which is largely what Urami wants to do. The Bandits were often not even shooting up because the Cover provided too much disincentive and the time it took to reposition was too valuable to waste for a crew that largely couldn’t ignore the vertical. To be honest, it wasn’t the going up that caused problems for planning, it was the going down. Having to either spend the 4-6” to get down our tallest terrain or falling and ending the movement basically meant that that model got 1 action that turn. Crews won’t be wasting time chasing pointless models “just because” anymore which gives some crews the window they need to do what they have to. Crews like Urami.
Schemes felt great to run through and felt easy enough to accomplish without too much of an issue, but you can trap your opponent and prevent them from scoring easily as well. Peter chose Breakthrough as his turn 3 Scheme and ran Parker over to drop a Scheme in my deployment. He had to isolate Parker, but he got both his Scheme marker down and stole my Strat marker from me. I charged my now deputized Kuchisake-Onna over and attacked him with scissors (doing not as much as I had hoped) and, most importantly, got within 2” of the Scheme marker. About 2 activations later, Peter was talking about scoring his points for his Scheme and I pointed out that he couldn’t because I had my scissor-wielding psychopath within 2” and he scrambled to try to do anything (ultimately he couldn’t that turn). In that wonderful turn 2 when Kirai ate several lead M&Ms, Peter locked me out of scoring Runic Binding because Kirai was positioned to place the final marker to form the triangle that would have bound almost his entire crew. The Strategy too felt good, without worry of either one of us running away with it.
Soulstones have a lot more punch now. Peter ran out of his on turn 3 and just couldn’t generate anymore (thanks to my inability to kill anything) so he mentioned that he’ll be keeping them closer to his chest in future games. I didn’t find that I ran out of them too quickly, but the few times I did use them they had a major effect. TheTap the Layline ability on Lost Love was incredibly clutch a couple times. I definitely prefer this system over the old one.
Finally, the best thing about this game was learning how good Empower is. It’s not busted at all, but it makes certain hands feel a lot more powerful. A hand of 1-5s means that you are pretty much guaranteed to get a bunch of triggers whereas a hand of high cards is just as good as it was before. The one weird niche is that it kind of makes 6s and 7s feel… meh. They are useful for those low-level flips that have no Resist or for discarding to abilities, but otherwise they felt kind of lame honestly.
On to the post-game review of how I played. Long story short - poorly, but not unexpected. Given that this was my first game with both 4E and Urami, I didn’t expect a ton else. Kirai, Envoy is all about throwing Seishin at your opponents, summoning them again, and then continually yeeting them through your opponent’s models. Seishin, despite having only 1 wound and being Peons, are still pretty decent. They move a speedy 8 and dish out Adversary when they die, so their best use is to throw them through your opponent’s models and end right next to them. That way, they give a Spiritual Chain token to that model and, if someone kills the wee dragon ghost, that model also gets Adversary. Lost Love is such an all-star now because he can teleport on damage, teleport on his turn, heal, eat Scheme markers (kind of), move models on both sides, and draw you cards. For the low cost of 5, this guy is insanely valuable and a Swiss Army Knife. Enslaved Spirit also punched up quite nicely, with the Guided by Guilt ability letting you control enemy models with Spiritual Chain tokens, which if you’re throwing out Seishin like you should be, most enemy models will have a token on them. I’m really liking how Urami feel at the moment and I’m excited to see where they go!
So, that’s my first game with 4E! The TL;DR is: No one is a superhero, learn to play 3D chess, Schemes are fun, and small cards are great cards. This has just reinforced my hype for 4E and I can’t wait to help teach it to the rest of my local group.
Oh, and Peter won 9-5. Not a complete blowout at least!
