Now the beta is almost completely finished, i am planning an intro day at my local club. This will take place on a Saturday, which will let me get a whole days worth of Malifaux in, and then if people like it they will hopefully know the game well enough to get games in on club nights.
Inspired by the Warmachine format of a Journeyman league which brings people into the game gradually i propose something like this:
Game 1 - 20ss Henchman led crew
This will be standard deployment, no strategies or schemes and no upgrades. The aim is to get to grips with the mechanic of the game, with the deck of cards and the hand of cards as a resource. Strategies and Schemes are a key part of the game, but i want to not overwhelm people from the first game.
Game 2 - 30ss Master led crew
Again, fixed standard deployment but this time with a Master in charge. No upgrades again, but there will be a strategy but no schemes. By the end people ought to be more familiar with the rules and now are getting introduced to how you win the game with the strategy. They will also know that both Masters and Henchmen can use Soulstones (something i know i'm always forgetting).
Game 3 - 40ss Master led crew
This time players will flip for strategy and the deployment. They can also use upgrades. At this point they are grasping the mechanics and can think about how they want to tailor their crew with upgrades (hopefully the previous two games will give them some kind of background knowledge to at least think about the choice of upgrades they make). No schemes yet, but its 80% Malifaux.
Game 4 - 50ss Master led crew
Out of the book game of Malifaux. Flipped deployment, strategy and schemes. Now they have had 3 games under their belt and been introduced to things slowly, having a strategy and 2 schemes to think about shouldn't be as daunting.
That's a brief introduction of the day. I primarily want it done in a day, because campaigns/leagues dragged out over weeks and weeks can lose momentum as people have to wait and organise games around when people can make it. This way you spend the day playing some games and hopefully be clued up enough on the game to play at a club night in the future.
I would also like to weave in a narrative, but that might be an additional layer that just might not work.
Rambling over, i'd like some input to refine this idea before pitching it to the rest of my clubs committee and eventually it's members.
Jacob