More Malifaux

So it seems Malifaux is the new hotness in the gaming world. At Game Kastle, they literally can't keep the starter boxes on the shelves.

Anyway Here's a batrep to the game I played last night. The summary: my faction was a crew of Mercs, where each model is really good at what it does but is specialized. Her faction was all about dirty tricks (think Cryx).

Also, if you want an in-depth review of the game, it's Here. Scroll down to the post by Fallen Heretic if it doesn't take you there directly.

So I have to say, despite being very Warmachine-ish (a game I simply couldn't get into), I like it. The alternating activations does make it harder to set up the combos. The skill of the game isn't the tactical skill, its about keeping your head. You have six cards in your hand that let you "cheat" results (imagine in a dice game that you had some pre-rolled results that you could use once per turn, but only a finite number of pre-rolls and some of them suck).

Anyway, those six cards generally come to 2-3 actions. That's because you have to wound after you hit and so on. So you can guarantee pulling off 1 action every turn how you want. You can probably pull of 2 actions. In a perfect world you could do 3, but remember he's got a deck of cards too so you end up using some of your cheats defensively (not being hit, saving throws vs magic, etc)

So the trick is to keep your head through the alternating activations and the bad stuff he throws at you. You sometimes have to let the little demon in the form of a toddler stab your guy in the back because if you burn your cards you won't have them for the nasty trick you have up your sleeve. It's essentially a mental discipline game, trying to not obsess over things with an alternating activation game, which is hard to do. It's basically the same idea behind Wargods where you sometimes have to take your lumps and try to win the fight you can win instead of getting caught up in playing tit-for-tat.

One downside: the models piss me off. Wyrd minis are purrty, but I HATE how the models are assembled. More than one model has these fiddly little bits. Big giant weapons that attach to the main model at the wrist. Come on! Give the weapon the whole forearm or the whole frakking arm so at least there's a lot of surface area to pin. But no, it joins at the wrist, leaving you to try and pin a surface area not much wider than a paperclip or else the lever principle works against you the first time that katana catches on something when you pick up.

But other than that, the minis are nice. The fluff on the game is over the top, one of those things were it goes so far over the line its funny:

Mad hatter serial killer? Lame.

Fat, bald undead dominatrix? A Fail at shock value.

Undead whores who can distract models by gettin' nekkid? Okay, now that's just hilarious!