Starting Malifaux with the Girl. (Re post for general advice)

[Sion_Barzhad]

Hi All,

Long time stalking these forums the missus and I have decided to take the plunge into Malifaux as she has always wanted to play a tabletop game and I have always wanted people to play with and an excuse to play this game. I have read up on people demoing the game and using mainly small crews of the melee masters in a Turf war scenario or whichever is the control the center scenario (Justice v Lilith spring to mind) but I can't find the Lady J boxset anywhere.

Luckily the girl likes Lilith so she will probably be running her. My question to the board is, who would be relatively the most straight forward master to bring to this?. I personally swing towards Neverborn, Thunders, Ressers and Guild.

 

I asked this on the Resser board and was suggested McMourning as my other choice Seamus targets WP which would possibly make the game feel slightly unfair.

(By straight forward I mean a Master that does the heavy lifting and doesn't require alot of layering and comboing/uses alot of complex abilities to get things done as I would hate to scare her off with complexities as she is new to wargaming)

 

So I put this to the general new players lounge for assessment. Help me pick a master to play with my girlfriend.

 

Crazylegs

 

[Reynard-Miri]

As a new player (haven't even played the game yet, actually) who recently saw McMournings card, if you want to avoid complicated then it's probably a good idea to avoid him.

 

Have you looked at Lucius? He's both Neverborn and Guild, and looks relatively simple rules-wise to me. Only kind-of-complicated thing about him: A given model can only benefit from his Commanding Presence once per turn, because once they pass the Horror Duel they are immune to further Horror Duels from Lucius.

[Dirial]

On the other hand, McM plays really easy while Lucius needs some understanding of the game to get the ball rolling. Just my experience.

 

I would look at the two Ten Thunders girls. Mei Feng and Misaki are fit your profile perfectly and are both a blast to play. Misaki is more ninja assassin (and thus more similar to Lilith) while Mei Feng is more "get in there and punch everything".

 

Lady Justice would be perfect, too, but I understand if you don't want to wait for a re-issue.

[Ferossa]

I'd play a few Henchman Hardcore games over Vassal with the sets you're thinking about. The highest barrier to entry for new players is the time and money investment in assembling a painted army. It can be a huge disappointment to spend hours putting together an army only to find out you don't like how it plays. (Plus on Vassal you can play Lilith versus Lady Justabouttocomebackinstock.)

 

I think if you play McMourning as Guild and layer in the conditions as she learns, you'll both have a good time. You can take the Guild models you want to use with Lady J and expand into Resurrectionists as models catch your fancy. When Lady J comes back in stock, you'll have a decent set of Guild models for her and you'll be in an excellent position to pick up a new Resurrectionist master.

[Math Mathonwy]

As a shameless plug, I just finished a slow grow league playing Guild McMourning where I, through a strange quirk of fate, ended up playing against Lilith three times. The reports of the games can be found here:

http://wyrd-games.net/community/topic/103373-the-amazing-adventures-of-slow-growing-guild-mcmourning-in-helsinki/

As a spoiler, let's just say that Nurses can pose problems to Lilith.

I do second Dirial's advice on going with Ten Thunders. I feel that their Starter sets (any of them, really) are the most beginner friendly in that they are solid but not over complicated from neither the opponent's nor the player's point of view.

Any of them would make a fine match-up to Lilith so I would advice picking based on aesthetics. Lynch is the only one that might be a bit powerful since Illuminated are so mighty and Hungering Darkness is a bigger boost in smaller games. When moving to 50 SS games it isn't too bad but in 35SS starter games he is quite a beast.

[zFiend]

I can back up Misaki, I have played the game quite a while now and I bought up Misaki for a beginner friendly tournament. I found it really refreshing to play Misaki. She was great fun, can be played with pretty much any models in the faction and is quite easy to pick up on playing and playing against. She was really great and me and Math actually had one insanely good game with Misaki vs Guild McMourning.

[Sybaris]

Here's what i've done with my wife. I made her read the fluff. She loved it, and by the end of the stories she knew what masters she wanted to play (Rasputina, the Viks and Colette and had fondness toward Ophelia). So i got those crews and we then started very, very small with the rules.

 

She had no wargaming background, so we started with a couple of minions. Then we introduced a henchman with some soulstones, and in the end Masters. Keep in mind that this was during the first edition of Malifaux which was far more complicated than this one, so you can probably get it going with henchmen right away. Still, start small no matter what she picks. Given Colette was a bit of a challenge for a newbie, we kept that crew for last.

 

But basically my advice is to have her read the fluff so she picks what she has interest in. She'll then be "hooked" enough to go through the process of learning the rules and enjoy the challenges they offer.

 

By now my wife has played plays Raspy, Viks, Ophelia and she's now working toward Colette.

[Reynard-Miri]

Crazy Legs is asking for himself. His girlfriend has already chosen Lilith.

[Sion_Barzhad]

Hi all,

Thank you so much for your replies over the weekend, as my home PC is currently dead I can only access these forums during my lunch breaks at work. 

@Reynard - I have myself only played one game with my Pandora crew (as I dig the models) but so far as I have played and read Lucius is alot more of a support master which whilst it will be great in the future I am trying to stick to crews that will do well scrumming together until we can get the nuances of how duels work etc etc etc.

@Dirial - Good ideas, the girl even likes 10 thunders aswell as do I. Unfortunately Misaki and Mei Feng are also currently out of stock anywhere I can find in my country so far but I will keep an eye out. 

@Ferossa - Good suggestions but we no computers = no go to vassal. I've been wargaming on and off for 15 years now so I am not so worried about models being useless (no such thing even if it's models turned into corpse scenery). Neverborn are my first choice for this game so I'll be picking up Lilith either way I'm just lucky the girl digs her. - Honestly I don't feel like picking up a bunch of guild models as the guild doesn't interest me nearly as much as ressers or neverborn or thunders.

 

@Math and Zfiend - No need to shamelessly plug, I was reading the thread the other day with much gusto. It was good to read some battle reps including masters that I am interested in and your games sound like they were a blast. Congratulations on the win Math. - As I mentioned above sadly I don't think I can get a hold on Misaki or Mei Feng soon but this was always a long term plan as I am still currently building terrain Thank you both for your suggestions and the laughs in your thread.

@Sybaris - Good show mate I did the same thing. Had the girl sit down and read through my malifaux 2E book in all the fluff parts anyway and asked her what she liked the sound of. She really likes Lilith and neverborn and Misaki and the concept of the 10 Thunders. Cheers for the ideas on teaching her the basics I will probably go ahead with what you suggest regarding starting small.

Cheers for all the input guys - I think I will go either Misaki, Mei Feng or Lynch to begin with (hopefully misaki) and see how we go. Will keep you all posted as things unfold.

 

[Ferossa]

After playing a few games with Misaki, I definitely vote for her. She's very agile and can swoop around the board and surprise you, but she's more of a scalpel than a cleaver. Your girlfriend has a good chance of taking her out with a few lucky shots, which is always a positive experience for a newbie. She also plays dramatically differently from Lilith, so you two can switch boxes and have a completely different play experience.