Your Favorite Thing About Malifaux

[Bengt]

The style of the plastic models is a breath of fresh air in an industry dominated by the "heroic" aesthetic.

 

Alternate activations; objectives are asymmetric without being totally so; variety of objectives; using objectives is the default, not kill em all; mitigated randomness.

[zFiend]

I love the models, they are just simply amazing, great imagination used in the models and stories. Original Seamus is the best sculpt of all (his avatar being close second). 

 

The game itself, just plain beautiful. 

 

The community, I really like the feel of the forums a lot and the fact that everyone likes the game so much it's usually quite easy to find an opponent for a Vassal game. 

[Math Mathonwy]

I really like the community, both the local scene here in Finland and the more global one.

I really do appreciate the presence of the developers here on the forums and their willingness to listen to the concerns of the fanbase and to fix things.

I love the rules - I feel that Malifaux 2e is the most solid rules system for slightly more competitive gaming out of all the minis games that I have played. Which is actually no mean feat since I have played (and play!) a lot of different systems.

I do like the models. I feel that Wyrd is constantly improving on that front and though there are still some hickups the trend is solidly rising and I'm really looking forward to what you will be offering next year.

[bertmac]

Setting is the number 1 for me. So diverse that whatever style you are after you can just run with it. I like that i just picked up a crew and a couple of models that i liked the look of and was able to be succesful with them.

I love turf war even though the game isnt just about killing a big ruck in the middle is always fun.

The competative part of me also likes that i "got" the game a lot quicker than my group and managed close to a year of dominance, whereas they are now finding things they are comfortable with and sticking with what they like to be much more competative.

[480]

My favourite thing about malifaux is that it has made me love playing games, any games, more than I ever thought I could. So, thank you very much:-)

[Solicitor 6]

I think my overall favorite thing about Malifaux is the diversity of the characters and mash-up of styles (steampunk, gothic horror, U.S. Wild West, Victorian manners) that actually work together as a cohesive universe.  Even the most polar opposite models have a subtle aesthetic that binds them together.

 

Coming from an RPG background, the emphasis on story and individuality of each character is also fantastic.  I was attracted to the fact that each piece on the board has their own tale to tell and isn't just one of a fifty being battallion. 

 

The diversity of play-style.  There is a master for every style of player and the diversity of strategy and schemes make every game competitive for those various styles.

 

Colette.  Her story in Rising Powers sold me not only on Malifaux, but sent me scrambling to find her box to start putting it together.  I eagerly await every new piece of fiction, hoping there will be another new piece on her. 

 

Favorite Model: my Willie.  It is my favorite basing job as I built a wall of stones and made a huge bundle of dynamite with a fuse that is lit.  He's running away from it.

 

Favorite Moment: I was playing Ramos against Kaeris.  My opponent had spent most of the game trying to take out Ramos, but the cunning M&SU leader kept squeaking out enough health through his armor and healing spell upgrade.  Then in Turn 5, one of his gunsmith's got a bead on a burning Ramos, changed the barrel to ignore armor and was able to cheat the Red Joker for damage.  Ramos was going to take about 8 points of damage and head to the happy hunting grounds.  I burned a Soulstone for damage prevention to see if I could mitigate a little to maybe hang him around with one wound.  I flipped the Red Joker, full damage prevention.  My opponent started spinning in circles in hysteria over Ramos's luck.

 

Which leads to another one of the fantastic aspects of this game: the community.  I haven't had a bad game or played against a "bad" opponent.  I've had my butt handed to me more times then I care to admit, but always had fun playing.  I love how after almost every game my opponent and I will discuss tactics and ideas on how to do better next time. 

 

Overall, I have had nothing but positive experiences with Malifaux and continue to look forward to it. 

[Spindle]

Im loving the minis so far! My favorites have to be my new levi box set and Lazarus (who gets bonus points for being slightly poseable). I also love the setting, coupled with the use of poker style cards it's great fun to immerse yourself in.

[Rob Lo]

I love that nothing is sterile. If you allow yourself the suspension of disbelief necessary for any good work of fiction, the grit, the grime, the tension is all perfectly tuned to what I'd think it should be. And yet, in all that steam and dark and horror and blood, none of it can be said to be depressing. Molly! C'mon, look at that story. It's awesome. The unlikeliest of heroes, with her oozing and her best friend the talking head and her pitiful following. I have still held off playing her, kind of knowing in the back of my head that once I do, I will see much much less of Nico and McMourning and all those other excellent masters. I love looking forward to her reveal in plastic.

 

I love that just the physical act of holding a hand of cards across from my opponent while playing puts me in an instant sense of a game of poker in a dusty corner of some rattrap bar in a mining camp. And oh yes, I'm about to cheat, and things are about to turn ugly for one of us.

 

And I love that on a few separate occasions now, I've shown someone their first real look at the game. From "Hey, I was gonna head out but I noticed you checking out the mini's. Do you play?" to that look an hour later when it clicks and they've cheated their first real cheat, and something is laying very dead at the feet of their punk zombie. When the eyebrows go from being furrowed to arched in surprise, and you can't help but think "Yeah, I remember that feeling". Yeah, that's pretty cool, too, I suppose.

[Linus Mcmold]

Malifaux is a setting that draws  players in with a rich symbolism, which competently melds classic literature, pop-culture and mythology. For me the ritchness of setting and mostly the Western feel has drawn me into the game, because I've never played a Western based game. But that was only the start.

My favourite moments with Malifaux would be lurking the forums during Beta Testing of Wave 1 & 2, evenings I've spent with stories from Rising Powers, Twisting Fates & Storm of Shadows in the Summer of 2013 and playing a tournament this month with a fully painted crew I've borrowed from a local henchman.

Currently I'm having a lot of fun building (and even painting) my extended Molly crew and I'm excited to paint it to the fullest quality of my skills.
I've been playing with shoddy painted Gremlins for almost two years now and the experience was unsatisfiying for the most part, but that didn't stop me from experiencing the rest of community.

I love both my META and the internet community (forum, facebook group, plus various blogs and podcasts).
The overhaul to The 2nd Edition has made a very good game great and even with some negativity here and there I'm more than happy to be a part of an ever growing community. Next step for me would be to go play games in other countries, but I want to polish my playing and hobby abilities before that.

Favourite things about the game are too many to count here and I could just repeat what a lot of forum members have already written in this thread. Ok, I gotta say I'm grateful for the toning down of soulstones in the new edition, that might be one of the things besides the new scheme/strategy mechanic that made the game better.

Also, a big thanks to Justin for making the Gremlin faction a fun faction to play.

They've felt a bit too rapey in the previous edition and now they are just fun, even if they seem a bit brutal to non-Gremlin players.

[Sancho of Rime]

Well, the obvious loves are all of the things above stated. The awesomeness of the art and the beautiful models. I'll be honest, the models from 1e were what kept me from jumping in originally when I was starting mini war gaming as a hobby. Once the rpg came out and I could see the wonderful flavor and world in it's full glory I jumped right in. The steampunk horror designs, the western dudes, the ten thunders. There's so much out there to love. 

 

However, my true shining favorite is the amount of character all of the models have in the game. My first box was the Viktorias(added Von Schill into there), and actually playing them always feels so epic. Everything from the title of their moves to the way they play together just oozes character and style. I've only really played a few games with them. However, every time I can do the combo with the 2 AP dragon's moves(Dragon's Bite and Flight of Dragons) I get all giddy. It's just such a stylistic and character driven move. 

[Justin]

Thanks for the comments, all!

 

I think what first drew me to the game was the smaller/affordable skirmish size coupled with the cool card mechanic. Helped that I liked the models.

 

But the community kept me here (and an eventual job offer didn't hurt).

[brdparker]

The game mechanics, hands-down. I like the theme and the models, etc., but I just enjoy the tactics and fun combos of the game, the math. I enjoy the card counting, the resource management, the risk management, and the focus on positioning. That comes from my boardgaming background. I'd have a perfectly fine time playing the same game with properly-sized cardboard disks for models and terrain.

 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the figures fine. It's just lower on my list than the game analyses.

[Hateful Darkblack]

I've never actually had interest in playing another miniatures game, before or since. I've always (well, for the past 30 years, anyway) been mostly a tabletop roleplaying-game player.

 

I think the things I like most about Malifaux:

• The flavor. It bends a lot of different styles in a way that feels natural, and the narrative is compelling, rich with conflict, and fascinating.
• The character focus. Individual characters are not similar. In many games it seems like models have different stats and maybe a third of them have some special ability, or maybe all of them have one special ability. Every model in Malifaux has a ton of special abilities, and every special ability affect tactics while also alluding to fluff.
• The complexity of tactics. Whenever I've played with a new player, there's this wonderful point I can't wait to reach, where they ask "Hey, if you kill all my models, can I still win?" and when the answer is "yeah, that happens about one game out of ten, really, or something close to it," their face lights up as they realize this is going to be a much more interesting game than they expected.
• The aesthetics. Every time I play Malifaux with someone, I feel like we've just made a diorama of a freaky 19th century horror scene, in addition to playing a wargame. Just making a beautiful board, with well-painted figures laid out, feels like we're telling a story together.
• The sense of having so much to learn. I have a habit after every game of Malifaux, whenever my opponent indulges my at least. I like to go through what went well, and what I could have done (and my opponent could have done) better. Every game I play, I feel like I've learned something, but that I still have a lot more to learn. It's awestriking for me.

(As far as favorite models go, I think I've made it clear that my favorite Master at least is Leveticus. I talk about why that is here: Why I Love M2E Leveticus. All still very true!)

[Hateful Darkblack]

There's another favorite thing I want to mention here, and it's more about Wyrd than Malifaux. I really love the way that I feel like I can trust Wyrd to make the right decision. I know Wyrd has problems with their upside supply chain sometimes (model scale and so on) but Wyrd very consistently works hard to think of the players, support the community, create excellent products, and listen to feedback.

 

Every time I've posted something about the models that was a solvable problem, I've noticed that four months later, that problem has been solved. The first run of plastic models had model pieces scattered all over the sprue -- and the next batch fixed that. Early plastic models shipped with slotted bases until someone noted that those weren't really helpful anymore -- and the next batch fixed that. People posted asking about cards for metal models -- and the Arsenal Decks got announced.

 

I like to imagine that there's an angel who reads every post and starts working on a fix the moment the problem gets mentioned. But really, I think it's just that Wyrd is a company that plans well, thinks about the playerbase, listens, and makes good decisions.

 

And I love that.

[Ausplosions]

So. I've been at a music festival for the last week, and missed this thread.

But it doesn't take much to remind me of what I love about this game, and Wyrd as a whole.

I love the game. LOVE IT. the setting! The fluff! The mechanics. I'm an old guy, and I've played a LOT of miniatures games. This is the most polished and nuanced game I've seen.

But by far and most importantly:

The people at Wyrd. If you have an issue, they address it. If you have a question. They can answer it. If you have an idea, they love to hear them. And most importantly, if you are a customer, they CARE about you. It is unbelievably refreshing that a large company, which for some of us is in another country, goes out of its way to not just look after its community, but BE PART of the community.

[RagingRodian]

I was initially drawn in by the metal models back before there was a Malifaux game. I found Wyrd at a little booth at Gen Con years ago, really liked the models, and bought a couple of them. Later on I saw Wyrd had a bigger booth and they were doing Malifaux demos but the game was a bit clunky- kept adding a few new metals to my collection though just because I liked them. Then second edition came along, I heard the rules were cleaned up a bit so I bought some Gremlins and found the local Henchman so I could learn how to play. I truly got lucky, as Sharp Objects runs a great Malifaux scene in my area. Now I am painting up some new goodies that I got during Black Friday to use in the team tournaments at Adepticon- hopefully we will do better than last year!

[Ferossa]

The forums. Everyone is polite, helpful, and respectful by default. The Wyrd people post regularly to give and answer feedback, and even though it may not be what some of the fans want to hear, they express a healthy amount of disappointment instead of turning into rabid howler monkeys. There's also healthy respect for different play styles, which makes reading tactics threads interesting and useful.

 

I like the wide representation of types of bodies (although I'd love a master that's a heavier lady!). I like that sexualised models have a reason to be sexualised and that it's equal-opportunity - and even when they're sexualised, it's mostly the amount of skin. All of the characters are competent and interesting and developed. All the models are incredibly dynamic and I love the subtle plastics (Lucius, Rasputina). Plastic models were a selling feature for me as well.

 

A tactical game based on story mechanics instead measurement and math is exactly what I always wanted and never knew could exist. Playing the game is like watching a beautifully choreographed (and occasionally comedic) action movie play out before you. I care about doing well in the game, but it's hard to care about winning when the story that's being told on the tabletop is so interesting. I picked up University of Transmortis for this reason, and I hope it's something Wyrd continues.

[cmusgrove]

The Card mechanic, along with the ability to cheat (mitigate randomness) from your hand.

Random schemes and strategies and the ability to pick schemes and keep them hidden.

Building your crew based on the scenario.

Hard plastic models, and the way they look.

Well written tight rules.

[StormLordXIII]

Little late to the party, but I'll chip in here haha.

The best thing about Malifaux gameplay for me, especially with M2E, is how easy it is to start the game. New players in my local gaming group have enjoyed it even more knowing that what you get in your first crew box is enough for you to get started. Now that the rules are straight forward as well, it's caught on like wild fire.

 

Overall, however, Malifaux's fluff is the most interesting to me. It's dynamic, well-written, and successfully blends so many genres that theoretically don't belong together. My favorite story is probably "World in Chaos" from twisting fates. The blend of Kaeris and Misaki, and the way the author described the dynamic of "control" vs. "power" was complex and engaging... the perfect preview for Storm of Shadows which came after it, I think. All of the new stuff in Crossroads is great as well, however, and I enjoyed all of the stories so much that it's hard for me to pick a favorite

 

Favorite miniature for me would be the old Justice sculpt; it's old school but it's the first Malifaux mini I painted, so I am partial to it. Out of the new plastics, my vote probably goes to Mei Feng. I love the braid and the tiger claws. And the scenic element rocks!

[Flint]

Reducing random factor to a minimum, introducing "luck management" by cheating fate or using other resources (soulstones for initiative etc.)

 

It's nice to pick up some random models from your faction just because they looks nice and still being able to do something with them in game.

 

Concept arts and overall esthetique, especially in 1st ed which was brighter and not so seroius as 2ed.

 

Variety of heroes and villains.

 

Colette and all her burlesque show - she sold me the game.

 

Edit: Plenty of references (e.g. Collodi to Pinocchio etc. Anyone else see Keith Flint in one of punk zombies?)

[Swiglitz]

Wow, this is tough thing to answer without running to several thousand words and most of my posts are pretty verbose as it is.

 

I'll try to make it short ... No promises though.

 

My biggest joy is the fluff, the lore, the background, the world, the setting, the however else you want to word it. I love the fact that it's very different from a lot of settings out there while still being recognisible and accessible. That, chaps at Wyrd, is a triumph. I adore the fact that much of what we know about the world comes in the form of short stories, dropping hints of what's going on and littered with unreliable narrators. I love the mystery, nothing is ever really answered outright, leading to much discussion, amongst the wonderful folks on these forums and my own small crew of close friends and fellow gamers. Whenever a new piece of information surfaces or a new nugget of ,albeit subjective, truth is dropped it immediately sparks of a frenzy of activity as 'real-world Malifaux scholars' scramble to see where it fits into the accepted wisdom, or what new possibilities it might open up. Which leads me nicely to my second point.

 

You guys.

 

The Malifaux community is so ridiculously friendly, welcoming,and helpful. Not to mention the active role the guys at Wyrd play. It's a true pleasure to come here and interact with everyone, reading the stories, laughing at the jokes, and getting help with my numerous tactical blunders. I love the fact you guys look after everyone. Whether it's a newbie looking for guidance on how to get started, or a veteran with a mispacked product who happens to live on the other side of the world, everyone gets just what they need with speed and the mininmu of fuss. It's great.

 

I could go on, but I'll try to rein it in.

 

The last thing I would say is, I love how the game feels. That's a pretty nebulous thing to say, but I don't really know how else to say it. I love how each master's play-style is different from one another and fits the fluff and atmosphere of the world. I love the card-mechanic and what it brings to how to plan your turn and I really love the fact you can a win game even if you've been completely wiped out. Awesome.

 

I'll shut up now.

 

Also Through the Breach.

[moxypoo]

Justin, you can't make me choose just one thing, because there are a whole lot of things about this game that I like.  Favorite models is probably the easiest:

 

Original metal Teddy and Baby Kade were the models that first got me looking at the game.  Simulacrum 29 is amazing; now that's how you make a Frankenstein monster!  With the new plastics, I absolutely love the new Leveticus sculpt (he's so menacing!) and the new Abominations.  I distinctly remember my reaction to seeing the artwork for the first time - I said something like: "Chainsaws for hands and and a giant bear trap for a torso?! That's so f***ing cool!  Take all my money!"  When the new plastic Death Marshals came out I had a pretty similar reaction; they remain one of the very few models I've bought simply to paint.

 

The most incredible thing about the game itself is the onion-like layers of tactical depth, in my opinion.  There's a poker element with the control hand, bluffing elements with asymmetrical (and possibly hidden) objectives, multiple levels of tactical considerations with the interactions between friendly and/or enemy models, many considerations when hiring a crew, and probably even more things that I'm missing. 

 

The background is also amazing in my opinion - I think Wyrd has managed to create a very unique setting and characters by combining inspiration from a huge variety of sources.  The easter eggs/real world references such as Coppelius, Collodi, Sue, and Hamelin are also fun too! 

 

Overall, my favorite thing about Malifaux is that it's the complete package - great background, great models, great balance, and great rules. 

[Parker Barrows]

I thought of a couple more things:

 

Abilities and the like have story reasons behind them. Sure, Lucius can't target Austringers for balance reasons, but I love that there's an actual story behind it.

 

Widow Weaver. Her picture on the old Malifaux site is what got me go Rezzers and Neverborn.

 

My play group. They're awesome.

[Daysleeper]

 

...

 Sure, Lucius can't target Austringers for balance reasons, but I love that there's an actual story behind it.

 

...

 

Wutt? Can you please point me in the right direction to find out why?

[Bodiless]

I'd have to say that what I love *most* is the mechanics of the game. The rules are incredibly solid, and the strategy-scheme-crew selection mechanic means you pretty much never go into a game where you look at the lists and say "well, I'm gonna lose". Or if you do, you can say without a doubt it was your own choices that brought you there, and not because your codex is behind the current curve (alas for my beloved Tyranids!). 

 

But it is the setting that keeps me in the game. If I just wanted an awesomely balanced rule system I'd be playing chess. I played a lot of the Deadlands RPG, and the moment I saw the model for Jakob Lynch I knew what my faction would be. That was just about a year ago, and in the meantime I seem to have collected just about every Neverborn model that is available (which is probably a sign of an issue of some kind). Throw in a great local community and this is essentially the only game I play these days.