Malifaux

Malifaux is a relatively new skirmish level wargame that plays off of the newfangled fads of steampunk, supernatural horror, and the desire for gamers to play a game in which undead hookers are a viable troop option. Despite bashing together a ton of things that were done by Deadlands years earlier, it still manages to be a rather fun game. Also surprising is the fact the storyline and world are not complete and total shit, like you would expect of something that looks like a bandwagon hopping attempt of the nth degree.

Game Mechanics

Malifaux is unique among miniatures games in that rather than rolling dice, players draw from their own deck of cards to please Random Number God. Actions can have positive or negative twists, which means that you flip over more cards and then take whichever is higher/lower, depending on the type of twist. Players also have a hand of cards they can use to cheat fate and replace an already flipped card with one that is better. Some models' abilities only work if a certain suit if played, so there's an advantage to keeping good cards in your hand to pull nice actions. Players have the option of purchasing official decks or simply using a deck of regular cards, with the devs helpfully pointing out which of the real card suits corresponds to their fanciful made-up ones.

The army-building mechanic is also pretty unique; players first generate a scenario, then hire their Crew using an agreed-upon number of soulstones (totally not ghost rock guys!) that set the level of the encounter. Each crew needs to be lead by a Master, which gives a few extra soulstones for use and dictates the faction of the Crew. When you're starting, this doesn't really matter, as you'll use the same Crew for everything, but in tournaments, all you're required to do is point out your faction beforehand, only choosing your Master when you figure out what sort of mission you'll need to play. A typical game is 30-35SS in size, which is about the size of one of the starter boxes.

Any soulstone not spent on hiring can be spent in-game by certain models to gain advantages on flips, generate new models, healing, etc. Certain Masters benefit from a large stash, and others demand that you fill the board with units before the game starts.

Victory is determined through pre-generated victory conditions. There's a big general one, but players can also take schemes, which are like miniature objectives. They earn more victory points if they announce them beforehand, which possibilities ranging from getting the first kill to assassinating the opponent's Master to simply being a dick the whole game. There are also Master-specific schemes, some of which are retardedly difficult to pull off and others which practically occur automatically.

The Factions

Because all games need different, "morally distinct" factions, Malifaux has five six now but the new one is weird. All of them have different play-styles, with the different Masters providing further diversity. There are also Henchmen, characters that can serve as part of a crew like normal, or lead a special crew of their own.

Guild

For the cowboy lover in all of us. Primarily a direct-damage/shooty type army full of cowboys and 'upstanding' citizens. Strongest in the meta right now because of their absolute superiority when it comes to shooting alongside absolutely retarded terrain rules that can lead to nearly empty boards. Best for people who prefer straightforward games of shooting the fuck out of people with cowboys. The box sets for them are fairly solid, with Perdita Ortega's being completely playable for a newbie who has never a game before.

They're fluffed as the big all-controlling group that manages everything in the game setting, accomplishing this through the twin fists of bureaucracy and shooting you in the fucking face. Kind of like the US government.

Masters

• Perdita Ortega: Crazy as Latina bitch. She leads the Ortega clan who are basically Mexican cowboys, each with a ridiculous pair of balls. The Perdita and the Ortegas are the Anti-Neverborn crew from the first book and due to a few other bonuses that help them counter/rape Neverborn they kind of lost the "-Neverborn" part and became Anti-Everything. Hands down most overpowered crew. Expect to play them a lot, they are like Shotaclones (Ken, Ryu and the fuck ton that aren't Gouken) in Street Fighter, most commonly played crew, has roughly even match ups with everything, dominant in events and anyone who doesn't play them in events has spent a lot of effort building and practicing to win this match-up so you can spot a noob straight away because they aren't powergaming the fuck out of their list against Ortegas.
• Lady Justice: Crazy blind bitch with an epic sword, epic sword fighting skills, bordering on weeaboo but not really due to being a cowboy/girl/person, leading emo anti-necromancer cowboys to hunt down Resurrectionists. Despite being the necrophiliac rape train of the Guild she is pretty damn scary to face with other factions as she can run a stall-their-crew-while-I-assassinate-their-heavy-hitters-one-at-a-time play that pisses off everyone who hasn't foreseen this shit happening, except Neverborn players who can counter by kiting or baiting her into an alpha-strike.
• Sonnia Criid: Crazy magic bitch, actually she's not that crazy, but pretty scary to face, not as overpowering as the other two bitches, she is the Anti-Arcanist Master and does pretty good that, as well as having "ok" match-ups against other factions. Despite lack of raw raping power compared to the other chicks, Criid offers more utility and can be surprisingly good at shutting down Leviticus and screwing over a Som'er crew running the skeeter fart nuke storm build that most people cringe at.
• C. Hoffman: The first non-bitch Master for The Guild. Basically is a Construct master, but he just superpowers an existing one rather than making them in the battle. Has a brother who went utterly insane after crossing the breach, he became a cyborg and has like a .50 cal chaingun for one arm and a powerfist on the other. A lot of experienced players gravitate to Hoffman because he is difficult to counter and has interesting crew lists.

Henchmen

• Luscius, the Governor's Secretary: This guy is a massive douche wearing a mask, he literally uses bureaucracy to shutdown his opponent's game and give his crew more options. While he and his choice of crew lack in the normal overpoweredness of the Guild, he makes up by having so many ways to just be a dick. Essentially a Synergies and Tricks based leader in a faction known for beatsticks. In the fluff he is slowly seeping power away from the Governor and consolidating a strong powerbase within the Guild, because he's rules lawyering dick. His special forces are the Guild Guards, yes plain boring cops are restricted elite units in Malifaux.

Resurrectionists

The obligatory undead-filled faction. Focuses on some trick-based gameplay, with certain Masters flooding the board with ridiculous numbers of generated monsters and debuffing enemy units. Truly ridiculous in the hands of a good player, but certain machine-based armies can shut them the fuck down by generating very few corpse counters (the creepy fuel that drives their engines). To play properly, expect to buy a lot of zombie dogs, especially if you're running McMourning. Notable for containing their first true weeaboo faction in the form of Kirari, their resident Japanese rip-off ghost who manages to not suck.

Fluffed as a bunch of lunatics running around, reviving corpses to eventually overthrow the Guild. Also entertaining because it's the faction most people point out when looking at the game, as it contains both zombie hookers and their Jack the Ripper rip-off, along with his own rip-off, giving you three more layers of rip than you'd want.

Masters

• Nicodem: Basically an undertaker with a pet vulture. Can and will raise a ridiculous amount of zombies in the game, can create any kind of undead model, even really bizarre ones like Levitcus's Hollow Waifs. Hasn't really been involved in the storyline. As a model he is actually really crap stat wise, just that he can win games with the huge ass horde of zombies. Tends to a slow, defensive grind that breaks with attrition. Underplayed in the meta and often wins when construct crews are pretty sparse in the local scene and he's lucky enough to not get any objective matches, hates and is hated by Neverborn because they want to avoid his attrition game with a nice assassination ploy while he has to play slower and more defensively than he normally does to block their obvious strategy
• Seamus: The Jack the Ripper clone. Has like the period equivalent to a Desert Eagle and despite being an absolute pussy in combat has a melee attack with his bag of tools that can one-hit kill any model in the game! which is just about the only thing stopping him from getting charged by every five year old with an inflatable hammer. Plays more towards strategic deployment and luring with his zombie-whores to setup executions with his pistol.
• Dr. McMourning: Officially he is The Guild's coroner, but also doubles as a player in the Resurrectionist underground. In reality he's a Frankenstein rip, his assistance is probably the only real success that he had with his attempts. Plays very aggressively, will butcher in melee and likes to swarm with stitched up dog things. Will use corpse tokens to build a superbeast and have it rampage for his endgame. Is the powerhouse combat guy for the Ressers and can often pull surprise rampages by initially playing passively until a gap appears to exploit.
• Kirai Ankoku: Asian ghost chick. Uses ghosts unlike the rest of the Resurrectionists who are all at the Zombie fans table. Plays very support-type role, absolutely fucked if she gets too close to melee monsters like Lord Chompy Bits or left exposed against the Ortegas. Otherwise Kirai was the only tournament viable master until Ten Thunders because she had a mobile crew and a lot of utility options, allowing her to play the objective game when in a bad match up. In Brawls (2-3 Masters aside) she is always the default option because it doesn't force you to split corpse tokens between Necromancers and she can pretty much do everything else the faction can't do.

Henchmen

• Molly Squidpigdeon: An undead investigative journalist chick in a relationship with Seamus that mirrors that of the Joker and Harley Quinn. She leads the Horrors special forces and has strong synergy with Rotten Belles. Currently is the weakest crew leader across the game, despite having special access to Horrors, she's still better with Belles and even better when Seamus is leading them.

Arcanists

Trick-based faction, they rely on synergy, buffs, and some direct-damage spells to fuck people up. Generally not too forgiving for newer players, but able to really hold their own with a competent player. Get some cool units, including the ever-popular steampunk spider we learned to love from Wild, Wild West. Options for a Will Smith-based Master are not included yet; right now, all you've got are a steampunk scientist, a dude who likes animals way too much, a frozen bitch, or a scantily-clad gold-digger showgirl. Expect games with them to take a while, as they are absolutely stupid with incredibly long combos and effect chains, with the worst offenders being the Showgirls, whose movement tricks are incredibly frustrating.

They fill the function of the secret society working to overthrow the power of the Guild and freeing magic, all while smuggling the shit out of things. Notable for controlling the Miners and Steamfitters' Union, which means they get all the neat steampunk toys along with some burly miners.

Masters

• Ramos: Head of the Miner's and Steamfitter's Union which is like a normal union except when they go on strike they have steampunk spider centaur cyborgs on the picket-line. Is a construct Master and pretty much was the first of the kind, so he's pretty much middle of the road in that respect. Basically if you like steampunk, you're probably fapping to the box-art on his starter box. Is an absolute nightmare for Ressers due to the fact he won't have many living targets and unlike them he can recycle his constructs constantly, allowing him to play the attrition game against a zombie horde, is especially good against Avatar Seamus because he relies on Fear effects.
• Rasputina: Russian girl who got stuck with being the chosen of the cult of an angry alien God of Winter. Squishy wizard who is probably the worst of all the masters in raw stats, except that she can cast well, specifically a fuck-you area-bomb she can drop multiple times a turn. She won't kill a model in one turn, just that in two turns she will combo her spell and knock all your crew to an ass-hair's width from death. Has Ice golems which shatter on death making them very difficult to deal with while she's throwing her blizzard spell around. Best mage archetype in the game and ok for a first master for people familiar with playimg skirmish games.
• Marcus: Probably insane, is a Druid, but not the game breaking D&D 3.5 kind, his story is probably a "mystery" but no fluff exists yet. Generally is liked and sort of balanced, but is way underpowered in general and in the meta sits he way down at the bottom. No idea why he's with the Arcanists as all available data tells us he loves animals too much to care about humans. His crew are mostly beasts and work best as a hit-and-run strategy, except anything that can do the kind of damage needed is too slow to keep pace with him.
• Colette Du Bois: Runs weird doll showgirls, can swap places like a puppeteer kind of character (but not THE actual puppeteer; Collodi), can setup interesting strategies and tactics with her maneuverability. Visually her crew looks like Seamus, but with store dummies instead of dead hookers. Has some really good tactical tricks but is fucked if they let a combat heavy model get an opening before she can pull a fast one to get out.

Henchmen

• Kaeris: One of the better Henchmen choices and more competitive than Marcus, Kaeris is like that girl from Firestarter or Carrie, only with mechanical wings and strong Union movement connections. She works for Ramos by doing sabotage and black ops stuff for the union. Makes very good use of models with Flame abilities, which allows her to put out higher than expected damage. Good crew selection too, can play very good ranged combat which applies fire. Her special forces are the M & SU Assets division, basically mining and heavy industry stuff with some odd Arcanist shit in the mix because blue collar wizardry steampunk right?

Neverborn

Glass-cannon beatdown forces. They can put out incredible levels of hurt, but can also die quickly. Very straightforward with some Masters, while others take a bit of getting used to, then completely shut down the game for your opponent. Topping the meta with Guild right now, as they seem to get all the best units, and do horrible things to your opponent. Their masters basically benefit from alpha striking everything in, shredding the opponent, and then calling it a game, because they've won, baby.

Fluffed as the original inhabitants of the hellish plane that the storyline takes place on, they just want to eat souls and kill the humans who invaded.

Masters

• Pandora: As in Pandora's Box. Basically her plan is to get you punched by your opponent. Forces willpower duels, a lot of willpower duels. Gets annoying buffs/debuffs every time an opponent fails in addition to whatever punishment failing the duel causes. She basically can sit in a bullet-proof port-a-loo in the middle of the table and make anyone her bitch. Has creepy children as her best friends. Neverborn are like that.
• Zoraida: Fucking Fugly as Voodoo Witch. Has awesome as control play, probably the best master in the game to do it with. Honestly only downside is horrible as a fucking hellhole of a face. Is like Tzeentch's Southern cousin with a face like Nurgle. Pretty much claims to be behind everything, which is probably true because no one wants that face in front of them. Can take anything with a willpower stat of 4 or less, which gives her an incredibly diverse selection for her crew, which is good because her starter box is fucking retarded shit in terms of viability, you will just buy her model and her Voodoo doll totem which is not included in the box and then whatever cheesey combo of models you want. Honestly her starter box is almost Marcus level bad except Zoraida can still piss all over your opponent with her control abilities and her evasive raven form.
• Lilith: Aggressive, extremely aggressive bitch queen of rapid assault melee plays. Uses Nephilim to do her bidding, which are basically demonic looking thingies that everyone draws/sculpts for Nephilm, instead of the golden bald giants from the bible. Can use Nephilim young who look like silly Japanese chibi versions of adult Nephilim. Was Queen of Alpha Strike until the master below turned up. Is infamous for her ability to ignore terrain like solid brick walls with her melee attack meaning she can freely wail on your master while they can't target her or even run away from their position because Lilith will get a free strike, this is fun as fuck to do.
• The Dreamer & Lord Chompy Bits: A young boy psychic on Earth day dreams. In Malifaux an ungodly monster in the shape of that boy terrorizes the fuck out of everyone. The King of the Demons wanted to possess the kid and basically wreak untold havoc on Earth... the kid enslaved him and called him Lord Chompy Bits. Until a massive nerfing that affected his crew's core mechanics and himself, this guy was borderline unbeatable, he starts as a little kid, but can zoom the fuck around, if he's killed or if his controller is a dick (100% of the time), he will "bury" and Lord Chompy Bits comes out, or The Dreamer can drop his whole crew on whoever the poor bastard he's standing next too, and then pick them up before they get shot up. Lord Chompy Bits is in the top 3 heaviest hitting melee beast in the game, isn't the toughest, but anything within range of the Dreamer and by extension him is already dead. Seriously this little boy and his demon king nearly broke the game, being able to threaten the whole battlefield from turn 1. His nightmares are also fairly mean, pre-nerf Alps had the power to dogpile a crew and use their stacked auras to make the other player's turn start and finish immediately, while Stitched Together do not die without looping their life gambling attack enough times to make you feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (this has been nerfed, it can still happen but RNG must bless it so), fundamentally everything associated with The Dreamer was cool but way too broken for game balance.

Henchmen

• Collodi: An ancient living puppet that carves children into killer puppets. Has some amazing board control and mobility tricks, can convert a basic Wicked Doll into a killing machine for a turn with his buffs, allowing you to trade lower valued Dolls for more expensive enemies. He can select only Dolls for his crew, which gives him access to a lot of powerful synergies. Meshes extremely well with Zoraida and her control game. Buy his starting box, get Zoraida by herself and a voodoo doll totem and you will have a crew equal in SS cost to every other starting crew boxset, but sitting on an entirely different power level as you throw so much synergistic boosts, debuffs and control abilities its not funny, for them at least.

Outcasts

Basically, everybody else. Most of them start with no soulstone cache, but make up for it in their own special way. Masters can have ridiculous learning curves; Leviticus basically benefits by the player learning how to loop killing himself to gain ridiculous numbers of cheatin' cards, then using said cards to break the opponent. Other Masters have similar tricks, and can do horrible things.

This faction also contains the Gremlins, which are basically their own hilarious sub-faction. Take one part orks, one part Deliverance, and one part drunken game dev, and you've got the Gremlins. They spend the whole game blowing themselves up, accidentally shooting each other, and sending pigs flying at the opponent. Hilarious and workable, but they're absolutely fucked against a Hamelin list.

Fluff-wise, they're all over the place.

Masters

• Levitcus: The Cancer that is killing Malifaux is his title, but only in the game's setting though. Necro-steampunk zen guy. Basically he will die every turn, and this good. It makes him one of the hardest masters to beat and to learn. Plays the most balls out offence game, even against alpha strike Neverborn. He can also summon a pretty powerful Desolation Engine from his Steampunk Abominations that he made out of the mangled remains of your crew/his crew. In the Meta he is like Germany in the World Cup: He won't win the tournament but any pool/branch with him is a considered a rough challenge at best. His crew is limited and the best choices are unique shit as bizarre and prone to loop dying as he is, ergo assassination or slaughter is just unfair against him. Being the first to play him in a local meta will net you a lot of easy wins because he has very little in common with anything else in the game.
• The Viktorias: Basically Viktoria went on an adventure in hellish plane of Malifaux and met a doppelganger, they became friends. You get two for one here. One has a pistol the other one has Katanna and will cleave shit up all over the place. Twin shenanigans and the like. Their crews are basically mercs looking for adventure or interesting deaths, while good beatsticks they don't have a lot of cheap tricks in a game where cheap tricks beat beatsticks every time. When seen in competition its usually in a Von Schill Freikorps list where they are technically in charge, its a solid build that lacks the depth of other crews but makes up by being pretty damn reliable and having an answer to 95% of the bullshit tricks other factions rely on to make themselves half as competent.
• Som'er Teeth Jones: The hillbilly gremlin master. Its 40k Orks but in a different game system and modelled on rednecks instead of English football hooligans. One case of good blatant ripoff in Malifaux. Has very diverse list builds and not correctly guessing what he's taking is going to be difficult to deal with on the table. He also possesses the most tricks to apply damage to models that bypasses defences, armour, damage reduction etc, one of these methods is a fucking aoe fart nuke, like the worst fart you've had after a Vindaloo curry and few pints of lager. Naturally he has a crew build where this fart nuke is going to hit your crew 4-5 times a turn.
• Hamelin The Plagued: Was originally a rat-catcher sewer dweller... Now he's trying to conquer Malifaux. Pretty much one ongoing homage to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Lots of rats. Like more than in Mexico City, New York and Hong Kong combined. Also extremely hard to beat at the moment the fucker finally got nerfed like a bitch, now you won't see him banned in anything that isn't a sponsored event and Hamelin players are no longer worse than the Tea Party. Neverborn have the advantage of being able to attempt to alpha strike him and than trying to keep their casualties from causing a draw or one of those out of nowhere losses, this works like none of the time. If you can't alpha strike Hamelin in one turn, like say most masters and their crews, Hamelin is your most loathed match-up.

Henchmen

• Ophelia Lacroix: Basically Ophelia and her family cosplay as the Ortegas, only they're Gremlins so expect lulz. They have better shooting than normal gremlins and are tougher, but still like having numbers. Ophelia's special force is The Kin, basically her family, like the Ortegas, only really hillbilly.
• Von Schill: Badass German merc, leads the Freikorps, which are a PMC of Badass German mercs. Considered better than half the Masters in the game, often nicknamed Superman because he can do almost anything, his crew is a little light on melee fighters, so you take the Viktorias to fill that niche. I'll repeat that: You have him work for a Master because Von Schill lacks melee power crew members rather than the Master acting as centrepiece of your crew. Good choice for people starting Malifaux and don't know what to play as his crew is generic but solid out of the box.

Ten Thunders

An ancient ninja clan that has left the 3 Kingdoms (Which is China circa 3rd Century AD instead of the game's normal 1870s aesthetic, but fuck logic right, its ninjas?) to form a powerbase inside Malifaux. They have a lot of Dual-Faction models which represents the clan infiltrating the 4 main factions, including somehow convincing the Neverborn to not eviscerate and soul rape them. This means that they are only 60% Weaboos, and 40% whisky drinking hardmen. This is mostly because of how each main faction already has a suit assigned to it, and Outcasts are a mess across the whole board, so instead each master is dependant on the suits associated with their other faction. The exception is their leader who is not dual faction and works like an outcast Master.

Masters

• Misaki; Mistress of the Ten Thunders: Ninja assassin master, very combat, 1 v 1 focused, does incredibly amounts of damage in melee, on par with Lord Chompy Bits. Some crew support, but being able to take Ten Thunders crew members means she has a reliable crew.
• Lucas McCabe: Dual-Guild Master, mounted and has access to sets of relics that let him slow or paralyse models, he also gets tougher when he's surrounded, has access to Guild units including the Watcher is almost mandatory if you want to have good card control. His unique mechanics are, aside from riding a horse which is broken when moving 2" without spending an action is considered a big selling point, being able to get random one turn effects every time he kills a model and being able to spend soul stones to buy special relic abilities before the game, usually he will take the +2 Armor (so killing him is harder) and Hunter (because he is ranged so ignoring cover is great).
• Mei-Feng: Dual-Arcanist master, specialises in Metal and Earth, also uses a martial arts combo system so expect players running her crew to sing "EVERYBODY WAS KUNG-FU FIGHTING!!!" during her activations, also reeks of Avatar fandom weabooness, not CGI Furry Avatar, the badass 2 cartoons about Aang and Korra with the Terribad M.Nightshamalamadingdong live action movie. Her unique mechanic are her combo chain triggers that allow her to pull off her crazy kung fu. When she starts its going to hurt.
• Jakob Lynch: Dual-Neverborn master, because the human chunk is in debt up to his eyeballs to the Chinese mob. Uses a status effect called Brilliance, its like a curse, radiation and crack cocaine, except the junkies have a lot of tentacles than human should posses. His trick is to get Brilliance on everything and get the Hungering Darkness out, which is stronger based on how many models have Brilliance and allows it to a lot of damage to models with Brilliance. Lynch runs a club where the staff are either Neverborn Skinwalkers or humans possessed by Brilliance, which makes him the only Neverborn aligned thing to actually interact with humans. His crew also contains the first prostitutes that aren't zombies, ghosts or mannequins, they just possessed by Brilliance which they spread to clients, which means its probably also an STI...
• Yan Lo:' Dual-Resurrectionist master. Undead necromancer who uses Ancestor spirits and can store them when they pass, gaining benefits for doing so, meaning if you massacre his crew he can be very hard to deal with, or he can resummon the ones stored next turn, because hey having an undo button is fun in tabletop games. Because he uses a specific type of spirit token, he works well with other Resurrectionists in Brawls, if you go with the rare 3 Master Brawl, he goes really well with the normal Kirai+anyone who does zombies setup. Also like Kirai he has utility functions and is therefore better than book 1 Ressers in the tournament meta. His unique mechanic is having 3 skill trees that he can progress in over the course of a match by earning Chi points, allowing you to adapt him on the fly.

Why Should I Give A Shit?

It's a cheap fucking game, it's got somewhat decent mechanics, and the devs actually listen to the players and update things. Not to mention the sculpts aren't terrible, which is fairly nice.

You should check it out if you enjoy Mordheim, because it's like that if GW actually knew a good thing when they saw one.

Compared to other systems, it may not be AS balanced, but at least constant effort is being made to move things in a balanced direction rather than simply letting each little thing have its turn in the overpowered sun before pulling out something better. The devs are working on improving the balance without removing elements from the game, or completely redefining how a given Master or minion works. It's not Warmahordes, but at least it kicks GW's butt. The fluff is ok, but a bit slow moving.

Also Zombie-Hookers.