An Abominable Goose

 

Long time Goose fans may be aware that I went back to Marvel Crisis Protocol at least in part because Malifaux entered an open beta period as it moved from 3rd Edition to 4th Edition. I had enough difficulty figuring out the 3rd Edition ruleset, I figured trying to participate during the beta and filling my head with a bunch of rules that were going to change was not likely to help my long term enjoyment of the game.

Well, Malifaux 4th Edition is officially here! And I decided to rejoin the Malifaux World Series and participate in a more casual online league (Unintelligible Barking, hosted by the Pack Mentality podcast) to try and figure out if Malifaux was back to being a game that I want to play.

I'm not going to bury the lede: the answer is yes. Resoundingly so. Malifaux 4e has been an utter delight, with the majority of the changes that have been made making the game much more approachable compared to my experience in 3e.

One of my great frustrations with third edition was that I very rarely actually finished games out. Most games in a tournament setting ended round 3 or 4 out of 5, and it often felt like they were a foregone conclusion and we could simply talk out what the remaining points on all sides were likely to be. Part of that was no doubt that I was a relatively inexperienced player - though even with 20+ games under my belt at the end of 3e I was still struggling to grasp how to make the game flow smoothly.

This is not to say that 3e was a bad game. The reason I played 20+ games of it was because I could see there was enough tactical depth and interesting options to be worth trying to achieve that level of mastery - but it remained elusive.

Malifaux 4e has radically simplified the game by changing the attack resolution mechanic, cutting down on the number of markers and changing the scheme system to allow more agency once the game has begun. It is also now a 4 round game with faster models across the board.

It hasn't all been subtraction though; new rules governing verticality make terrain more important and you can now use your low cards to 'empower' duels, meaning the game's generally lesser focus on card draw can be mitigated and all models are more likely to be able to hit the triggers they have on their actions than before. You can also now cheat (replacing your flipped result with a card from hand) even on duels where you are at a penalty, which makes that aspect of the game less punishing (though with lower amounts of card draw, when and where you cheat has never been more important).

To me, the game still feels distinctly Malifaux. It is still, by far, the most complicated miniatures game I have played. It still has the highest amount of agency over when and where you use your resources. But I can understand how this feels like a downgrade to some people who had really mastered the more byzantine M3E rulesset.

I think the highest praise that I can offer it is that I am now 7 games in and whilst I am very far from having even begun to master the game, I also feel like I am capable of playing it and not embarrassing myself too badly. Barring a few odd instances here and there, rules generally work as you might expect and every crew in the game still has something unique. 

Now. Whether or not those crews are all balanced against one another is another question. Early indications would seem to suggest not. But the bones of the crews seem fairly well-defined, and Wyrd are a company which has historically moved to address balance as time has gone on. As far as starts to a new edition go, this seems like a very bright start to me.

I own a lot of Malifaux, and unhelpfully it is spread across a bunch of factions. I just love the miniatures and the lore - on a long enough timeline, I would say there's a good chance I wind up getting almost everything because the number of misses in the range are so low. They're fun to paint, often a complete pigging nightmare to build, and even if I never played the game I'd probably keep up with them just for that.

But I needed to start somewhere. I picked up the Nightmare box for 2025 - Bleed Neon - which looks absolutely incredible. As this is the only Outcasts crew I currently own I figured it would be a good way to avoid temptation and just solo one Master consistently between both events - which I think is a good way to try and get a feel for the game because (hopefully) you start getting a feel for what you can reliably ask your miniatures to do, and can then worry more about what you're playing into and the strategy/schemes you are dealing with.

As it turned out this was a great call. Amalgam (the crew the box represents) have a bunch of tricks which boil down essentially to 'we don't care about your defensive tech'. Rider Alyce just turns off almost all defensive abilities in a 3 inch bubble around her large base. There's a lot of Ruthless which ignores 1/3rd of the defensive abilities. The big damage dealer in the crew - the Desolation Engine - does irreducible damage. Very useful!

I'm not going to give an exhaustive blow by blow of all my games so far. I will just say that I ultimately went 2 wins, 3 losses in the Malifaux World Series event, and the difference between my first game and my last was stark.

With the caveat that I'm obviously still far from an expert in the crew, here are my very brief thoughts on the keyword:

Rusty Alyce, Trigger Happy - Alyce herself is a little underwhelming as a Master unless she's flipping 13s and getting more Red Jokers. This does happen more than you'd think - I have had it come up 4 times in the 3 games where I played her. Her crew card is great though. Every single model you hire gets a bonus action to remove an enemy scheme or remains marker and infuse a soulstone (which are used to power strong abilities). This makes taking schemes that require scheme markers into the crew very difficult to score.

Hollow Waifs - Trigger Happy's totems. They are her 'extra lives' (though she loses the ability to interact if she uses them). They are still strong because having 2 models before you hire anything is good, and their bonus action lets them move your models that are caught in the brawl around and potentially make scheme markers. Very handy. 

Rusty Alyce, Rider Remade - Alyce is much more reliable herself in this crew. Her aura is great. Her mobility is absolutely nuts. You get to say "Do you think I can jump that?" before doing sick horse-or-motorcycle jumps over terrain every round. Top tier. 

Her crew card is also one that I think has a huge amount of scope for growing with you as you learn the game; every unique Amalgam model can copy an ability from your opponent's models. So if they have a model with a great action they can use in one turn of the game, you can spam it every turn if you want to. Rude. And everything in your crew can ignore one defensive ability symbol per turn, so if your opponent has brought a bunch of Hard to Kill... no they didn't.

Soul Battery - Rider Remade's totem. Incredibly mobile. Can make your other models interact. Can do a bit of healing. Hard to kill. Just a very solid piece that isn't super pivotal to your gameplan but you can offload a lot of the scheming to your totem and Master and feel like they have it under control. 

Necropunks - 3 soul stone minions. You can have 3 of them. They usually take at least 2, sometimes 3 hits to kill. They can leap on a 4 so they aren't often blocked by terrain. I found them very useful on Boundary Dispute and Plant Explosives.

Abominations - 4 soul stone minions. I've never hired these because both versions of the crew can summon them relatively easily. They have strictly average stats, but the main thing you want from them is their Unmade ability. When they finish their activation, any enemy model within 3" with an injured token takes 1 damage. Their job is to be annoying and chip down enemies, which they excel at.

Scavengers - 6 soul stone minions. I love scavengers. They have the same Unmade ability as Abominations but they are tougher, and most importantly they have Scrounge. In Rider Remade this becomes your main source of marker removal (and she can summon them too, which is great). They also have Weird Device which lets them copy an action from your models for the cost of a stone. So if you find yourself flooded with stones you can have them copy big attacks or one of your many ways to make scheme markers in a pinch.

Hard Stop Herbert - 6 soul stone, unique. Herb is a fantastic schemer. He is no tougher than a Scavenger but where they have marker removal he has Onward to bonus action walk and is speed 7. If your abominations are around he can also use them as beacons to place which makes him almost impossible to lock down. If they don't just kill him.

Vee - 7 souls tone, unique. Vee is more solid support. She's pretty tough with armour and Hard to Kill,  Her Secret Inspection is the best thing on her card though, moving a model within 8" up to 5" and making a scheme marker with the potential to heal or remove a token. It does cost an 8 which is high, but early on the ability to move a couple of big pieces up and get some markers down for your other models to jump to makes it easy to get into the fight.

Marlena Webster - 8 soul stone, unique. Marlena is my favourite model in the crew. Her whole existence is about being A Problem, and she does it well. Her main ability is Rotten Core which straight up disallows interact actions within 3" of her, which is huge. But she can also pulse out marker removal or 1 unresisted damage to enemy models who are injured. Combo that with some scavengers and abominations and you can chip a lot of models down very quickly. Her ability to charge if she is attacked also allows her to reposition to continue being annoying elsewhere if she gets in trouble.

Desolation Engine - 9 soul stone, unique  Probably the centrepiece model of the crew. The Desolation Engine is a big dumb brute that does big swings of irreducible damage and, if attacked by your opponent, can spend a stone to declare an action in return. Note, this is not an attack action. You can do a TON of stuff with this to become a huge problem for your opponent. If you summon in abominations around him, he can also eat them when they have done their job to heal up! Which is great fun.

 Ashes and Dust - 9 soul stone, unique. I really want to like A&D - everything else in the keyword I think is great! - but he's very expensive and his most useful ability is reliant on your ability to secure remains markers where you want them to be, and your opponent clustering up enough to let him get two or three targets with his Rusted Winds ability. I feel like he might still have play in Recover Evidence, where his resilience is useful and a smaller crew is stronger, but even there I suspect there are better options most of the time.

And that's the lot, for now!

I've really enjoyed my return to Malifaux. I'm excited to play more, too. Expect to here more honking on this subject in future.

HONK!