[Malifaux] Little Green Men (And One Little Green Lady)

I’ve been playing Malifaux lately. The greatest attraction of the game, so far, is that I can comfortably fit my entire crew and full set of gaming aids inside the satchel I normally take to work, and still have room for a book to read on the coach.

This is not to suggest that the only appeal of the game is ‘it’s small’, far from it. It’s been fun from the word go, partly because I’m utterly incapable of taking it seriously. The wealth of options on each model’s card is compounded by the alternating activation sequence and the range of victory conditions in play at once, creating a tactical environment where I just can’t keep track of or evaluate everything - so I’ve stopped trying to keep track of everything, and just gone for what seems entertainingly destructive.

It’s not optimal, but Malifaux doesn’t strike me as a game that someone of my, ahm, limited faculties will ever be able to play ‘optimally’. The only parts I’ve not enjoyed, so far, have been the ones where I go all Warmachiney, trying to wrangle the exact positions and angles of models and exploit the precise dynamics of sequence and mechanic; those have all been quite stressful and have seldom resulted in any genuine tactical advantage. I’ve only been enjoying the games when I say ‘hang the sense of it all and blow stuff up’ – fortunately, that seems to be working out for me.

Been Painting: Goblins!

Born on the Bayou!

Not the most photogenic paint-jobs I’ve ever done; trust me when I say that the camera has not been kind to these lads and lass.

Ophelia’s face isn’t much fun, though; hard to reach with lots of protuberant details.  Should I file those ridiculous cartoon lips down a bit?  It’s seeming like it might be a sensible approach…

Reservoir Gobs

Whilst handing in what is (probably) the most important document I have ever written today, I passed by my friendly local games emporium (as opposed by my unfriendly, slightly more local games emporium) and happened to recall that I had some ill-gotten gains about my person.

Malifaux Rhymes With Expo and Demo

So, the Expo turned out to be rather fun: reflections on the Warmahordes Nationals and my Frugal picks from the indie developers’ hall can be found elsewhere, but that’s not the agenda here.  Here, I want to talk about Malifaux, which I’ve been snuffling around for quite a while, but which had a few barriers to just picking up with not much aforethought.  The card-based mechanic is interesting but warrants trying before buying; the breadth of possible objective combinations (schemes and stratagems both up for player choice) led to concerns about competitive viability; and I was struggling to see how a game with five or so models per side encourages further investment beyond the starter box – because rest assured, it will do so.  Wyrd are a company like any other, they want to make money (just look at those expensive propietary accessories and terrain, for crying out loud!), and if they’re at all smart they won’t assume an endless parade of new customers available to drip feed them £40 at a time and then fade away.

Fortunately I was able to answer these questions and more on Sunday; over lunchtime, I sat down for a demo game with a thoroughly nice chap who turned out to be Tarragon from Miniature Wargame Conversions, and chatting with the distributor who was overseeing our demo rapidly sorted out a few essential truths.