Malifaux Dungeon of Teleporty Death - a fantastically frivolous scenario

[chunky04]

My Malifaux group is a bit light on for terrain most of the time. A couple of weeks ago, we had a four way game on an Octagonal table, using primarily the old Mordheim terrain. There were a lot of doors present, and we invented on the spot a silly scenario involving teleportation through the doors.

Partway through the game, with us all being fans of FPS videogames, we decided telefragging was possible. This resulted in much hilarity when Perdita's Df8 could do nothing against the might of the telefrag! This seemed like a fun idea, and I couldn't help but think how the glyphs in Descent look an awful lot like the old teleporters in Doom, and thus was born...

Malifaux Descent Scenario of Teleporting Doom!

This post will go through the process around the scenario. This post contains the first draft of the rules. I'll then do a battle report on a crack at it, and at the end I hope myself and at least one of the other players will chime in with thoughts on how to make it flow better.

This scenario makes use of Descent board to create a fun and utterly ridiculous variant of Malifaux. The emphasis is very much on fun and frivolity, and is definitely intended for group play.

The idea is to create a dungeon full of separated rooms. To traverse these rooms, players must use a variety of teleporters and doors, all of which can have semi-random effects.

The objective is to find the lost treasure of Inigo Montoya. This is contained in a chest in the central room. However, the central room is the hardest to get to, relying on either luck, or getting one of the the rune keys and going through the two run doors. The rune keys are also found randomly, but when in play, should become the focus points for a blood bath!

When players get into the central room, they will be able to choose on treasure chest to search before they are teleported back out of the room. If they find the artifact, the win! Otherwise, they are teleported back of the room to start again.

There is also a Royal Rumble element to the scenario, in that there will be a random selection of participants starting the scenario, and then random additional models come in over time.

The following pic shows the board setup - the number are room numbers.

Royal Rumble Rules:

Starting Models:

For each non-central dungeon room, randomize to select a player. That player then randomly selects one of his models to go in that room. Repeat until each room is full. The GM will then draw a random fate card. This will be the number of activations required before a new model is randomly selected to join the fray in a random room.

A Black Joker selection will mean that the last model placed has experienced an unfortunate accident and had the wrong map. The other players may immediately decide which room he is placed in. A red joker will mean that the player who had the last model enter will immediately get to choose another model to enter and its starting room – this cannot be the master of another crew.

Doors (5 move points to activate)

The doors are joined in the following sequence:

1, 4,7,2,5,8,3,6

Again, a card will be flipped when any door is used. On a Black joker, the door hits them with a Bash attack using combat 8! On a Red Joker, the player may use any non-Runekey door. On any other card, they will go to the next door in the sequence.

Teleporters (3 move points to activate)

Note that when a model is on a teleporter and is teleported onto, that model has been telefragged and is immediately killed, unless it can use a soulstone.

The Glyphs are teleporters. When activiating a teleporter, models will jump to a random other teleporter. When the teleporter is used, flip a card.

Black Joker – Model draws again, but their activation is ended as soon as they go through the teleporter.

1 – 8 Model teleports to the appropriately numbered rooms teleporter.

9 – Model may choose to teleport to any room containing a friendly model. If none exist, model may choose location other than central room.

10 – Model is hardened by their travel through the teleporter. Flip again until the model flips a 1-8, but model gains Armour 2 for the next 10 activations.

11 – Model realizes that time has slowed down as they exit the portal – this model gains Fast. This is an exception to the normal rules and can stack with a model which is already fast. Reflip until a 1-8 is flipped.

12 – Model gains enlightenment in passing through the portal. Their actions seems guided by fate. All attacks made by this model gain the benefits of Focus. Reflip until a 1-8 is flipped.

13 – Model receives a training montage while in transit – model receives the benefits for 10, 11 and 12! If the suit on the 13 matches the models faction suit, the model may teleport into the central room.

Red Joker – model may teleport into the central room.

Money Piles (2 Movement points to activate)

Black Joker – TRAP! – a bash attack with Combat 8 is immediately made against this model, ignoring armour.

1-5 This model gains Hard to Wound 1 for the next 10 activiations

6-10 This model receives a plus damage flip on all of its attacks for the remainder of this turn and its next activation.

11-13 This model receives 1 soulstone

Red Joker This model receives 2 soulstones

Mystery markers (1 Movement point to activate)

Black Joker – BAD TRAP! Model is immediately struck as though from the dual sword wielding Viktoria.

1-5 TRAP! – a bash attack with Combat 8 is immediately made against this model, ignoring armour.

6-10 Model receives 1 soulstone

11-12 Model receives two soulstones

13 Model receives two soulstones and a runekey

Red Joker Model receives two soulstones and a runekey, and is invulnerable until its next activation.

Soulstones

In this scenario, all models have the use soulstone ability. Masters will start the game with their soulstone cache, and no other soulstones can be bought. Soulstones can be found in the dungeon.

Soulstones can be used in the following additional ways:

If telefragged, the model may use a soulstone to force a reflip on the telefragging models teleport roll.

Models can use a soulstone to reflip any roll on any of the tables above.

Winning the Game!

The game is won byrecovering the artifact from one of the treasure chests in the middle. When they activate a treasure chest (at no cost in movement), they flip a card. If the card is 13 or higher, they find the artifact. If not, they are teleported to a random location. There are numbers on the back of the various chests from Descent, and we used these as a modifier to the flip. So if a 3 came up on the first chest, the second flip would get a +3 bonus and only need a 10 or more.

Edited May 4, 2010 by chunky04
Formatting

[Nathan Caroland]

Sounds like it was a hoot!

[Gremlin Swarm]

Wow.

That's a 'keep the charts/rules handy' scenario, but it looks like fun.

I bet you could do a variant involving placing the board segments as they are moved onto, thus giving a mysterious/exploratory feel tot he game. (Just number all the doors and teleporters and use a system for where the model gets sent when they use one.)

Maybe add some traps that activate when someone gets the treasure, as well as a requirement to get back out with it. ("Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip!")

(Now you've got my brain in weird (Wyrd?) idea mode.)

[chunky04]

See battle report here:

http://wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=12216

Hopefully Skell will drop by and leave some comments on how to improve the scenario.

[Skell]

This scenario was epic epic fun times.

When we began the game, all we were told was the cost of activating the doors/teleporters/moneypiles/mysterymarkers. We didn't have any idea about what to expect from them. So there was alot of discovery early on in the game, which was very fun.

Best improvements i can think of are, The order we were arriving into the dungeon in the original games rules was pretty haphazard. Myself and the resser player ended up getting more models down faster then everyone else(me more then him, but that worked against me..).

Hence why i telefragged myself alot.. lol.

It would be better if everyone got at least a model, early in the game(one of our players missed out early deploys thanks to the black joker). Maybe a better system would be:

Everyone starts with 2 models unless you Black joker then you get 1. Red joker gives you an extra guy into any room you want, after your first model has been placed. Then each player plays one model randomly from their crew into each room in order from room 1 up to 8(trying to fill all the rooms with least 1 model at the start). This will get all the rooms with at least 1 model most of the time.

Then when the next "enter the fray" happens its the top 2 players. They both bring in a model into a random room when we get to the next into the fray deploys.

Also a maximum of maybe X(X = number of players x2) instead of 13 activations(on a 13) till next deploys.

Just an idea..

Also, Control hand was difficult to refresh, we played it when you hand emptied you got a new one. So half the time we were just looking for ways to empty our hands in anyway to get a new one. (least it kept the black joker in our decks hehe)

Burn a stone from anyone for a new hand if down to 2 or less cards? Maybe would be a decent fix. Stone's weren't difficult to get.

I DID have a young nephilim with 11 stones at the end of the game, even perdita didn't want to hang around to fight him lol.

And, Keeping track of the upgrades gained by models from teleporters. We ended up using tokens, but the whole 10 activations etc meant that you had to remember too much (when you have like 6+ guys).

Maybe weaker but permanent upgrades with special tokens on the charter sheet to represent?

Or even special ability cards they can use as a once off? (think feat card from descent) Like "when dueling play this card and add any suit type in addition to any already in your casting/combat total."

Outside of those 3 minor issues I had an awesome time. It was an absolute adventure and hope we can do it again sometime.

[chunky04]

Ooh, I like the feat card idea, that would work and be very Malifauxy with the cards.