Malifaux 3E review after probably 100+ games. (it's shawn post time)

[ooshawn]

So the long and short of it. Malifaux is a good game. This will probably be a negative rant type post, since I feel the positives of the game are apparent and don't need to be highlighted.I just woke up so I'm gonna format this in a way to help my sleepy mind address issues and then be able to come back and edit and add to the original post.

1.) The biggest issue I see is something I called out in my first malifaux review. In order to make a game competative and have a  ultra tight rule set, you just always seem to cut down on the fun factor. League of legends faces this issue all the time if they make a character too play or nerf a ability too hard. I've played off and on religiously since First edition and I can say without a shadow of a doubt, malifaux for me as long 90% of it's "HOLY SH!T that model can do THAT!?!?!?" feeling. Some characters still have it like seamus1, hamlin?, Reva, just things that make you wowed and pumped to try that crew out.  I think mathematically I guess to have a tight system, you just have to keep everything so close together it hampers my favored type of design. Malifaux now really feels like a game designed for tournaments instead of a game designed for fun. And you can argue about what that means, But i'm of the opinion that the design started with balance in mind, as opposed to fun in mind.  The other extreme of that is like 40k where it's just either just useless or just absurdly strong stuff all over the place. I would really like to see for a update to move away from this. Every single model really needs to have a feeling of "damn, that's BADASS!" to it. that's what draws you in and keeps you in.

2)This is sort of a extrapolation of the first comment. The game has gotten far too interreliant?(is this a word?) on models being too close to each other. I'm a guy that wants to move all my models spread out, and the design team seems to have went the mentally less challenging route of , lets make a ton of buffs and auras 3-6 inches.  A lot of crews , A LOT of crews just bubble up in third. I'm not gonna pull punches here, this is boring as hell and quite frankly just sucks. I don't like it at all. I want to be able to spread my crew out more. The board is 36 inches wide, I don't wanna play the game where my crew is all within 12 inches of each other.   

3) deadman's hand. I'm past this, I just don't care anymore. it's like, just don't do this again. this was dumb.

4) new cross faction boxes. I literally stoppped buying malifaux product irl because of this. This is got to be the most backwards idea I have literally ever seen in table top. Not even games workshop comes up with ideas this cancerous. Just make the boxes 2 single faction masters, and a versitile or a model to patch a keyword. whoever thought this was a good idea, just wow. This is like, mind blowingly awful. I can't believe any  adult  gamer came up with this idea.

Good stuff

1) keywords are a great idea. I say take it a step further and come out with theme crews like warmachine. Really relive specific moments in malifaux history. Make them not subtle though, really go nuts with it. 

2) I think titles were  a great idea. good job wyrd.

3) still a pretty darn good character driven skirmish game. there is way more competition now than there was when 1st edition came out though. I think

[Morgan Vening]

12 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

4) new cross faction boxes. I literally stoppped buying malifaux product irl because of this. This is got to be the most backwards idea I have literally ever seen in table top. Not even games workshop comes up with ideas this cancerous. Just make the boxes 2 single faction masters, and a versitile or a model to patch a keyword. whoever thought this was a good idea, just wow. This is like, mind blowingly awful. I can't believe any  adult  gamer came up with this idea.

Agreed. Another option would have been to put two copies of the cross Keyword model in the box. The material cost is negligible. 

If someone plays both (as I do), I can have each based and painted thematically for the crew they're in.

If someone doesn't, then they can trade away the half they don't want, and foster more community through trades and collaborative purchases.

But as it stands, noone is going to want a Mah without a Rock Hopper, a Brewie without Shojo, or a Seamus without White Rabbit Co.

Meaning likely a majority of players are going to be buying a $40-$50 box for two models.

Just feel it's going to cause more resentment from players than a minor change would have cost.

[ooshawn]

Yeah really. I don't claim to be some sort of Big Brain, all knowing god.... BUT DAMN, they could have run this by me and I got a response in like surely 3-5 seconds. "yeah. No , don't do dat"

[GrumpyGrandpa]

3 hours ago, ooshawn said:

3) deadman's hand. I'm past this, I just don't care anymore. it's like, just don't do this again. this was dumb.

2) I think titles were  a great idea. good job wyrd.

Just gonna supplement this with my own theory. 

I believe Wyrd knows that Dead Man's Hand isn't fun for the gamers, and that Titles are a step away from that concept.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't titles essentially the next lore step for every character? There is no Sonnia anymore. Only the Sonnia, Unmasked. So while we can still play Sonnia (v1), she is basically a lost character. Much like Nicodem or Ramos. 

So in the future, I imagen we'd more likely see some masters not getting any titles (due to them dying, being locked away and so forth)

[RisingPhoenix]

I would love to see a lot more crazy game modes (rather than crazy models).  Something along the lines of trying to gain control of Ramos' robot, battling in the middle of a firestorm during the Burning Man creation ritual, that sort of thing.  Game modes where the fight isn't particularly fair or balanced, but it is awesome as heck.  That lets you play awesome as heck modes without hurting competitive balance since the two are entirely separate, and it guarantees you won't get two players with different expectations at the same table (one wanting fun silliness, one wanting competitive balance). 

I do think title masters fix the DMH issue, since there's so little problem in retiring a title vs. retiring a crew.  A title being set aside briefly is like "meh," while taking out an entire master is a huge impact.  I think that Wyrd was partially drawn to them as a way to "take masters out of the meta" for a bit without taking the crews out.  Now we could take out non-title Sandeep or non-title Dreamer and see what the faction looks like without them.

[Maniacal_cackle]

1 hour ago, RisingPhoenix said:

I would love to see a lot more crazy game modes (rather than crazy models).  Something along the lines of trying to gain control of Ramos' robot, battling in the middle of a firestorm during the Burning Man creation ritual, that sort of thing.  Game modes where the fight isn't particularly fair or balanced, but it is awesome as heck.  That lets you play awesome as heck modes without hurting competitive balance since the two are entirely separate, and it guarantees you won't get two players with different expectations at the same table (one wanting fun silliness, one wanting competitive balance). 

This is a fantastic idea. Love it!

5 hours ago, ooshawn said:

4) new cross faction boxes. I literally stoppped buying malifaux product irl because of this. This is got to be the most backwards idea I have literally ever seen in table top. Not even games workshop comes up with ideas this cancerous. Just make the boxes 2 single faction masters, and a versitile or a model to patch a keyword. whoever thought this was a good idea, just wow. This is like, mind blowingly awful. I can't believe any  adult  gamer came up with this idea.

Given that M3E managed to get it down to just a handful of crews having this issue, this is a real step backwards.

For ressers I think I needed to buy one box from one other faction (the Wanyudo box) if I wanted to complete the faction.

Now I need to end up with 9 boxes with models that I can't play to complete the faction. That's such a huge step backward.

And I know it has been talked to death, but it seems like something that should keep coming up as long as boxes are sold this way...

I also find myself in the same boat. I want to play a lot of these new crews, but when I look at purchasing Yan Lo for instance I just feel a lot less interested now that I end up with some useless models. Which is funny as mentally I know it is a trivial cost in the grand scheme of my hobby budget, but still messes with me.

Of course I was already the sort of player that would buy 2-3 boxes max to make a crew, and now that's gone up by 1 for every crew. I was initially attracted to Malifaux by the appeal of being able to play a crew on the cheap, and now increasing those costs by a whole extra box is just not as appealing.

Which is a shame, as mechanically I love the idea of the titles. And I'll certainly be picking up the titles for my current masters. Just feels a bit more of an obstacle to pick up a new crew when I could be happy with what I have in Malifaux and pick up a crew for another game or a board game, etc.

That said, Wyrd is pretty great so I'm going to keep buying just to support the game, but I certainly feel less enthused.

[Azahul]

6 hours ago, ooshawn said:

4) new cross faction boxes. I literally stoppped buying malifaux product irl because of this. This is got to be the most backwards idea I have literally ever seen in table top. Not even games workshop comes up with ideas this cancerous. Just make the boxes 2 single faction masters, and a versitile or a model to patch a keyword. whoever thought this was a good idea, just wow. This is like, mind blowingly awful. I can't believe any  adult  gamer came up with this idea.

Oh buddy. We've had this conversation so many times.

 

Your suggestion is nearly as bad for any player who doesn't play every Keyword in their faction (they might be lucky and play both Keywords in a given box, but it's a crapshoot), and it halves the total number of new releases for those who are faction complete. Do you know what you can do if you are comfortable only getting 3-4 new releases from Malifaux Burns? Buy half the new boxes. Choose only the ones with models from your own faction, if you want to perfectly replicate the experience you describe. You don't need all the new Master models, unless their base size changed they're pretty optional. If your problem is that you want to spend less money and get fewer things in return, that's honestly an option in your hands already. 

[Azahul]

On the fun factor, is there any game that retains its "Woah, kapow! Awesome!" factor after a 100+ games? Malifaux has the best storytelling mechanics of any game I've played. I've played competitively balanced games with almost zero flavour, I've played beer and pretzel games where you roll buckets of dice, games where the mechanics are evocative and tell stories and games where you may as well be playing chess. Let me make two things clear:

 

1) Competitiveness and balance doesn't make a game more or less fun or exciting. Malifaux's mechanics tell awesome stories, it is one of the best games in the business at that. When I run events locally, I make sure there is a prize for "best story" at the end of the event. Each round players come to me and tell me how the mechanics in their game told a tale. Misaki succumbed to drugs and turned on her own soldiers, dragging them into addiction with her. A Doxie seduced a drilling machine right in front of the Bushwhacker who was clearly infatuated with its favourite vaguely phallic construct, rendering them both distracted and confused (yeah they're not always appropriate). There is humour and excitement and wild moments of storytelling in this game, and it would have them if balance were thrown out the window as well... unless throwing out the balance began giving too many people negative game experiences. I have seen so many people over the years ask if a game would be more fun if it were less balanced, but having played less balanced games I can assure you that the balance of a game only impacts the fun when the balance is poor and the players feel it in a way that tangibly impacts their experience.

 

2) Familiarity breeds contempt (or, you know, it at least diminishes excitement). Those beer and pretzel games I mentioned? Play them a hundred times and they get boring. Most of them get boring and familiar way faster than Malifaux because, put simply, they are much more shallow experiences with far less to explore. The ones with wild and zany powers that always feel too strong evoke sighs of exhaustion instead of gasps of excitement after they've happened a few times. You will become increasingly aware of the purely mechanical aspect of any game you play unless you consciously and actively continue to reach for the wonder and the excitement. It won't be there forever on its own because, quite simply, you'll just get used to what the game has to offer over time.

[ooshawn]

I think you misunderstood my sentiment or more likely I didn't verbalize it clearly. I'm not bored with the game, but I can tell you the feeling that you get from models that feel powerful and take you by suprise is much different than say a canine remains. you know when you go through the book, and you look at models and say OMG THEY CAN DO THAT?!. That's the only thing i'm referring to. In first and second , they had it on everything almost. It's due to the shrinking of the numbers, distances, just getting the system tighter FOR SPECIFICALLY the purpose of balance, instead of taking the arguably much harder route to balance everything at the level  of power in first and second. I'm not saying the game isn't fun by any means, just there are many models that are less fun than they should be. I don't mind subtle, but subtle has to precede unlocking the full potential of something and still be impressed. Like Chess is a REALLY balanced game. I can enjoy chess, but I don't play it because it's just not stimulating in ways that I like. Games workshop isn't super concerned about balance, but they are like the dark side of not caring about balance. They don't care if you build armies with 40 rocket launchers and other cancer like that. You can do the same thing in malifaux to a lesser degree, where you just pick the best models, and it's not nearly as unbalanced.  It's kind of preference based. Like Dungeons and dragons 3.5 was in no way balanced. IN NO WAY was 3.5 edition balanced lol. But it's my favorite system by a mile, because you know what? there are times when I wanna be able to LITERALLY Stop time, leave a few meta magic empowered fireballs on you , and teleport away. that sh!t is fun to me.

[Azahul]

5 minutes ago, ooshawn said:

I think you misunderstood my sentiment or more likely I didn't verbalize it clearly. I'm not bored with the game, but I can tell you the feeling that you get from models that feel powerful and take you by suprise is much different than say a canine remains. you know when you go through the book, and you look at models and say OMG THEY CAN DO THAT?!. That's the only thing i'm referring to. In first and second , they had it on everything almost. It's due to the shrinking of the numbers, distances, just getting the system tighter FOR SPECIFICALLY the purpose of balance, instead of taking the arguably much harder route to balance everything at the level  of power in first and second. I'm not saying the game isn't fun by any means, just there are many models that are less fun than they should be. I don't mind subtle, but subtle has to precede unlocking the full potential of something and still be impressed. Like Chess is a REALLY balanced game. I can enjoy chess, but I don't play it because it's just not stimulating in ways that I like. Games workshop isn't super concerned about balance, but they are like the dark side of not caring about balance. They don't care if you build armies with 40 rocket launchers and other cancer like that. You can do the same thing in malifaux to a lesser degree, where you just pick the best models, and it's not nearly as unbalanced.  It's kind of preference based. Like Dungeons and dragons 3.5 was in no way balanced. IN NO WAY was 3.5 edition balanced lol. But it's my favorite system by a mile, because you know what? there are times when I wanna be able to LITERALLY Stop time, leave a few meta magic empowered fireballs on you , and teleport away. that sh!t is fun to me.

Power is relative though. What made the ability to stop time and annihilate half the city feel incredible in D&D 3.5 was the two-fold factor that both most NPCs and other players in your own party like your poor fighter couldn't begin to rival that. It felt incredible because no one else was doing it. But it became a problem for that fighter player as they increasingly wondered why they were playing that same game. If there's more than one player in a game you can't rely on power (or, in a wargame, deliberately bad balance) to create moments of awesome because they come at someone else's expense. At least I as a fighter in D&D 3.5 could get some second-hand fun from my friend doing crazy things while being on the same team as me. A competitive game doesn't even have that. I mean I'm always happy when the friends I game with are having a good time, but I like to have one too at some point. Wow factor from being outclassed isn't worth pursuing, it comes at someone else's expense, and the baseline for power is what everyone else can do.

 

And for what it's worth, as someone who came to Malifaux in 3e, this edition did make me and my friends go "Woah, your Master can do that?!" in nearly every game we played for the first twenty games or so. But it wasn't for the insane power levels and or necessarily because we felt we were being outclassed by an overpowered opponent, it was because the mechanics were cool and telling a clear story in, frankly, innovative ways. Coming from straight wargames it was incredibly novel to see a crew of Gremlins holding a moonshine party for both themselves and their opponents, or seeing Titania terraform an entire map back to the forest of her youth. The marker and token systems are honestly great as systematised generic mechanics that can be used across the game to tell all sorts of different stories.

[ooshawn]

I'll have to ponder on this for a bit fora  response , withy my kiddo 

[ooshawn]

okay kiddo is asleep. I see what your saying and in 3.5 like I said it was completely balanced all crazy, but it was the  most fun, and you didn't have to min/max to use time stop either.  Warriors could still do broken stuff min maxing and so could every class really. that's what made it great. everyone had something over the top they could do. Well hundreds of things by the end of 3.5.  In first edition someone playing dreamer, still could play vs collette and both players would have a great time. (Both of those masters btw, were batsh!t insane in first.)  I could definitely see coming into the game in third, just like the people rolling into 4th or 5th edition d&d and thinking everything was amazing.  Coming from first and seeing the gradual tone down ultimately culminating in third going imo too far. Power levels in second were imo on par. Some things needed balancing obviously , but that continual balance will always need to be applied when a lot of players are pointing at a specific thing, and saying "This is grossly unfun, even against other strong stuff".  So for me it's not like I want to one shot people, but for me I feel like thematic of the game feels toned down as well. You have to understand in first edition , masters were gods. Like ...GODS. Now you got some masters that just feel like strong illumated. (i'm looking at you lynch2). I feel like i'm well within the bounds of acceptable critique by saying, " I ain't down with dat"

[ooshawn]

I'm saying maybe we don't need a stat 7, 18 inch lure  on a 5ss model...But maybe some 3-6 inch auras could be like 8-10 inches where appropriate, and maybe make it to where crap models don't need auras from other models to function as much. make models more independant so you can spread out more and have more agency with individual models. I don't want my models to have to constantly babysit other models, or be babysat it feels like far too often in third. I don't mind keyword cohesion or synergy but to me, in my opinion it feels like they went the Low effort way and just said. okay turn one you stack up all your models in a blob, and you figure out your optimal activation order and buffs and off to the races. It just feels generic and lazy. again just in my opinion

[fire5tone]

I am... Unsure where to even start with that

I guess just by saying that's a very skewed view? Masters aren't gods nor should they be treated as such especially in a game when you want the entire crew to potentially be impactful, lynch2 might feel like a more powerful illuminated but that's because he basically is lore-wise, and with him came more tools to make the crew better and effectively puts huggy as the master instead supporting the thematics. So I don't particularly think that's fair

 If you don't like bubbling there are a ton of crews who are independent, I'd argue that's more often the case than not, maybe you just keep playing crews that arent mostly independent?

And I *really* do not appreciate all the claims of "low effort" imo it just speaks to an incredible level of ignorance to just how much can go into the process of actually balancing things, a lot of the reason numbers did have to get tuned down is not because it's easy, but because it becomes unmanageable after a bit of time otherwise, like if you try and min max 3.5 (god, making challenging encounters for that is just the worst thing) or 2e but Ultimately a lot of this as far I can tell is just the numbers aren't big enough, cause I don't take any less fun because of it myself (so in my opinion it's meaningless as far as real criticism goes but that's fine)

[ooshawn]

we all have our opinions

[ooshawn]

For the low effort, I think at this very second without thinking about it a ton, it's the exact oppposite in my mind. It speaks to the incredible amount of effort it takes to make the game balanced with more powerful abilities or larger radiuses. So many levers and numbers, that's why league of legends gets balanced damn near every couple of weeks. So in my mind, lower effort is a reasonable, while quite possibly hurtful/offensive descriptor of very small auras and tight bubble crews and lower ranges.  Never my intention of course. I find that saying everything in the correct way provokes very little conversation, because well there isn't much to talk about. "oh he doesn't like his game toned down". I mean .... what's to say there? not much right?

[Math Mathonwy]

I don't find big numbers exciting in and of themselves so I guess that part of the criticism doesn't hit home for me. I feel that Masters in 3e feel more different from one another than in 2e due to their more focused design and (especially) the keyword mechanics. To me, the wow effects would be something like Dreamer messing up with his deck or Titania filling the board with Underbrush which are both tied to the keyword but they still feel like effects the Master brings to the game. Now, that said, there are definitely mechanics that have been toned down - Brewmaster for example is quite a bit less extreme than his 2e version (though for the better, I think), so I'm not saying that you're completely wrong or anything like that.

As for the title box packaging - I feel that it is quite a difficult question for Wyrd to be able to release a title for every Master and keep the number of SKUs to a manageable number. I think that the current solution is fine, though I certainly do understand the criticism of it. And Morgan's suggestion does sound good.

Personally, when it comes to "useless" minis, I'm more miffed by the number of Minions with three sculpts that you never ever put more than one in your comp (if even that).

[ooshawn]

and I am certainly a proponent of using 3 copies of minions. especially at that 3-5 ss range

[HowNot2Wargame]

So for people who don't like the other master being in the pack.... I at first was really annoyed at this then I realised the conversion possibilities.

Iron heart for me is going to be Melissa KORE when I find a suitable multichambered gun.

One of many with a bit of green stuffing is going to be changlings.

So I guess where there is a will, there is a way.  Just a thought anyway

[santaclaws01]

10 hours ago, ooshawn said:

For the low effort, I think at this very second without thinking about it a ton, it's the exact oppposite in my mind. It speaks to the incredible amount of effort it takes to make the game balanced with more powerful abilities or larger radiuses. So many levers and numbers, that's why league of legends gets balanced damn near every couple of weeks. So in my mind, lower effort is a reasonable, while quite possibly hurtful/offensive descriptor of very small auras and tight bubble crews and lower ranges.  Never my intention of course. I find that saying everything in the correct way provokes very little conversation, because well there isn't much to talk about. "oh he doesn't like his game toned down". I mean .... what's to say there? not much right?

It's also a lot easier to mess up in League of Legends, or any other competitive video game, and then revert the change next week. Not so much in Malifaux. Especially when even seemingly minor changes can lead to massive increases in power that aren't readily apparent at the time.  

As an aside I'm not sure why you're honing in on aura ranges so much, it's really not all that different from 2e.

[SEV]

I pretty much disagree with all of your statements @ooshawnbut I really like that you take the time to verbalize what you see as pro and con in this game... Not everybody are looking for the same game experience: you're a timmy 😋 (and this is totally ok)!

I think @RisingPhoenixas one of the best solutions : diversity of game mods are the way to go.

That give a lot of design space to Wyrd and could help to please people that are seeking other type of game experience.

Having said that, I think classic Faux, at its core (a 1 vs 1 complex strategic games) lean toward a competitive/spike way of playing. And I really hope that Wyrd keep it that way. I actually hope the walk the extra miles to do more ex-post playtesting so we avoid Unbalanced stuff at release (their fail rate is a bit high for my taste with the titles release).

Still if Wyrd manage to please the widest base of gamers possible without compromising what make Faux great, it's better for everyone since it means the future of the game is bright (I don't want to have the perfect competitive game if it's played only by a handful of power gamer worldwide).

[ooshawn]

I think at the end of the day, All my complaints boil down to....................I hate bubble crews. if we are all being honest here. I just wanna have a larger presence on the board. EDIT* and I like to get my dopamine rush from powerful abilities

[Maniacal_cackle]

Ironically, there is an easy way to have a bunch of independent models as you describe...

You can just play super friends lists.

But if you want synergy-oriented crews, it does make sense to give some range limitations to many form of synergy. If all buffs had large distances, it would negate the weakness of synergy.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Also on the idea that every single model should feel epic...

Im sure the designers want that too, but it is incredibly difficult to do. I've not seen any other game that gets as close as Malifaux does.

[ooshawn]

It's super tough. I remember in second edition being like, welp they really screwed the pooch on this one. These masters are all garbage now. But then I read the cards and I was like WHOA, literally every master still felt nuts. Now In third I think they finally toned everything down to where even after 100+ games, I'm of the opinion, that they just cut too much off the top.

The worst offenders for the bubble crews have like 2-6 inch bubbles and the whole crew is full of those. it just turns the game into a thing where you occupy 12 inch bubble of board and then you work real hard to get all these interchangeable bubbles on top of a enemy model. that's find, but I truly believe in my heart 8-10 inch auras are better, because just standing somewhere to have a strong effect , to have to diminish it to 2-6 inches, it just feels tedious. To me at least. as always just my opinion.  

The thing is I love crew synergy , but I think it might be a false equivolency(nope, not googling how to spell that lol) to say that synergy strength has to correlate with proximety(holy sh!t) of crew members. Hero clix used to do themed crews by keyword, JSA, Green lanterns etc etc, and it just gave crew wide buffs if you built the crew to the theme. Which I think is kinda also similar to warmachine theme lists. Lets you not have to so heavily rely on just death balling around the board