Halloween Themed Demo evening and Open Gaming

[Tograth]

Hi folks,

I'd like to invite any and all to come and attend a special Halloween themed demo evening that is coming up on Thursday 3rd November, and will run from 6.30pm to 10.30 pm.

As before, the demo evening will be run in association with WARPS gaming society at their open gaming evening in L1 in the electrical engineering building, University College Cork, Ireland.

Feel free to come along, and bring your friends!

Cheers

Michael

[Crozius]

Had a great time at the demo. Definitely complex and interesting, while still being quite accessible. Good, clear explanations and direction, and the Halloween candy definitely added some incentive

Certainly got me interested in getting my own starter box.

[Buceph]

Another first time poster here.

I became interested in Malifaux about 18 months ago, but never committed seeing as I was a broke college student. As a slightly less broke soon to be employed person I was at a gaming con in Dublin last weekend. I've never wargamed and never painted models despite doing pretty much everything else in the "Tabletop Gaming" hobby. I decided to buy some models, mainly for painting but if the game was good as well, that was going to be a bonus. Asking the Cork crowd up in Dublin about Malifaux (I was tempted by the box sets in the shops) Mike's name turned up as the go-to-guy in Cork for the game. I tracked down his number and sent him a text to ask a few questions. Five minutes after texting him, I got a call back and was party to a 25 minute explanation of the rules and factions and had an invitation to this demo. I went and bought the rulebook then and there. The next morning, I called him back with a few questions and with them answered bought a box set and a couple of blisters.

Anyway, Mike wanted a review of the demo. I'll be fair and honest, it's the least I can do for what really was a great introduction to the game. The most important thing to note is that the demo left me wanting more, which is good as I've already bought the models.

There were four players, although I imagine there was demand for another four spots but that wouldn't have been practical. A friend of mine sat through the entire demo just watching and chatting to us getting an idea of the game (I know he's interested in Puppet Wars, but I think I can convince him to take Malifaux up as well.) We were playing a halloween special. There were treasure chests dotted around the map and opening them earned you Victory Points (in the form of sweets.) For every chest opened a zombie spawned, and killing zombies earned you more Victory Points (more sweets!) There was also a chest that gave a random power-up, and sometimes had bad effects, depending on the fate card pulled.

Good things:

Mike spent very little time explaining the rules before we started. Just enough to get us making our first decision, then he explained more and more as the first turn progressed. It was a noisy room, and getting us straight into the game got the point across better than a barely audible lecture on the game.

He never got angry or looked annoyed despite my many stupid questions (some of which I asked more than once.)

He spent time with each player going over the implications of their models' powers. This was handy because it left each player with time to see how their different models and powers interacted. So by the time my turn came around again I had my questions lined up and an idea of what I wanted to do. I think if it had been a normal 1v1 I wouldn't have had time to analyse my strategy and card interactions.

Sweets!

The players weren't battling against each other. So there was no bad blood, and we were able to help each other out, both in game and with the rules. I think if I had been fighting against another player it would have meant that we were both showing each other bad play and not being sure of the rules at each other.

Bad points:

One of Mike's models was broken. I know this goes with the territory, but with people not even playing in the demo picking up models there's always the chance someone will be clumsy and break something. Mike didn't look angry or annoyed, just a little disappointed. There was obviously a lot of work gone into his modelling and they were getting compliments all night. So it's a shame to see some get broken.

I was unsure about the difficulty of the game. My characters only took minimal damage. Why I'm unsure about it is because one the one hand, I didn't see how the characters worked when they were under pressure and were put in difficult situations. On the other hand if I were to be fighting an uphill struggle I might not have had the wherewithal to work out the cool interactions between powers. Maybe this will be addressed when I get the one-on-one demo I was promised by Mike.

Finally, he kept calling the sweets, "candy!" I know this is an American game, run by an American company but if you're going to be forcing us to use dodgy words I'm going to have second thoughts about it all.

All in all, I really enjoyed the demo. It left me wanting more, so I'll have at it another few times at least. And I'm quite eager to get my Hamelin the Plagued up and running and seeing how many people I can infect (although I was warned that Hamelin is quite a difficult master to master.)

[Tograth]

cheers for the feedback Buceph as I said, any time you are looking for demos or advice, give me a call and I'd be happy to help.

that one on one demo will be much more in depth, and you'll get to see much more of the deeper interactions and damage dealing that each model can do