Getting More Interest in The Game

[Final_Crucible]

So I've been really fascinated in the game, and I know the local store I go to is one of the only stores that sells Malifaux in the immediate area...so I guess I had a question. Do you know any great ideas to market and get more people interested in the game so we dont have just five people who play (I'm not complaining, but I also love to see different painting techniques and styles, so I'd love to see more people be part of it)

What has worked for you in getting attention to Malifaux? Or maybe, what things do you think should be avoided.

Additionally, the store is located in a college town, so any suggestions on getting college student interest would also be interesting to here.

I'm just trying to help the local business store and get more people interested in a game I really love!

[LordZombie]

There are a lot of aspects of Malifaux that make a great selling point. It is one of the cheapest games to get started in. Most starter boxes are priced between $25 to $45 dollars and that alone gives you what you need to play a few encounters. The rulebook is $15 and a fate deck is $8 (or $12 if you go plastic). Another thing that really sells Malifaux is the miniatures themselves. When some people see the box sets, they will fall in love with game right away. So Malifaux is good at selling itself, but what you need to do is run demos. Find two easy crews (Seamus, Lady Justice, Lilith, Rasptunia, or the Victorias), paint them up, set up a nice 3' x3' table and show people how it is played. That is the best advice I can offer. That is really how Malifaux got started in my area and that was over a year ago and I still get new players joining every month. Once you get a small group going, others check out what you are doing, point out some the selling points of Malifaux (see earlier in the post), they will join in. Don't get discouraged if no one shows up for the first couple demos, just keep at it. Have Malifaux nights (or days) on a day when you know the shop is busy and keep it on the day. The locals will get used to it and start showing up. Once you got a good group going, set up a day for Malifaux and start off will some open play. It will take some time, smaller games like Malifaux are a hard sell to some people as it is "young" in gaming terms. But keep at it and before you know it, you will have a group of 10 regular players and you will be a henchmen running story encounter events. Hope some of this helps and best of luck.

[G. Footman]

the local group around here's gotten big, we usually have 3-4 games going half the time at the local store.

[xKoBiEx]

If you play a lot of games and have fun doing it without a lot of arguments, more people are going to want to try it. The key is to make them have the same fun experience.

My local shop went from 4 guys around a 4x4 table taking turns playing each other to a pool of 20 guys and a very successful league of 11 people who had a great time. The growth time was only a few months. While I don't think we are going to get many more than the 20-22 players we have now, that is a pretty good pool of different factions, crews, and playstyles.

[Jewomie]

I pretty much echo everything that has already been said. I do have some things to add though, i suppose.

Things that have worked for my brother and i include:

Build some really nice terrain. This game has a lot of character put into the world of Malifaux itself. Build yourself a demo table that shows that off. Don't just use the game store's leftover 40k trees. There are tons of pics and ideas here on the forums, take a gander through there and you'll see what i mean (if you haven't already anyway) Even the Terraclips are pretty eye catching themselves. If you're showing off the game on a table that the regulars wont recognize, they are more likely to take a second look. Giving them time to see the cool models.

Secondly, (and please don't take this the wrong way) make sure your models are painted really nice. They don't have to be studio quality... i'm not saying pay someone to do it for you (unless your into that sort of thing already) But make sure you're doing more than just a grey primer and a black wash. Put a little time into them. The sculpts deserve it, and again, it will turn heads.

Third (and this kind of happens without much effort, but i'll still mention it) flip as many cards as possible in your demo. The more people see you not using dice, the more interested they will get. a lot of people hate the dice, but it's all there is. Make sure you show off one of the most interesting mechanics of this game as much as you can.

A few other things my brother and i did to build up our group were to play small games. usually only 15 stones. we'd use a shared strategy and only one scheme, and we used really simple masters. The ones noted above were the usuals. I almost always ran either Lady J or Lillith, and he would rock the viks and raspy. This way you get to see all aspects of the game. spells, morale, cover, shooting, melee, placing, growing, charges, everything, but with real simple spells that aren't too hard to cast.

Sometimes, we would rig the deck a little bit. Daniel would have the red joker in his hand, and we'd make sure i had a black joker in the top 10 to 15 cards so they could see both of the fun cards at work.

another thing we did a lot were to play with our hands open so the crowd could see what we were doing, and help explain some of the tactics we were using. such as cheating low to tie an attack (to show that the low cards still have their uses).

The last thing we tried, and had good luck with it too, was i would have someone actually sit down and play against Daniel, with me right next to them telling them what to do, and explaining things as they came up (stats, triggers and so on). this worked because it was exactly like watching a demo, except someone who hadn't played before was actually flipping the cards, and for some reason, they really like that.

And i know, in Malifaux bad things happen... but it never hurts to let the new guy win the first game. (just don't make it too obvious. lol)

hope this helped!!

[Final_Crucible]

Thank you EVERYONE for all of your advice I really appreciate it and am taking all of it to heart as I plot ideas with the other gamers in the local store! You all are such a great help!

[Ryu]

I'd like to reiterate the "just flip the cards" point. This week at my LGS I walked in to a bunch of WarmaHordes going on - no one had their Malifaux stuff. I sat around for about an hour and was just about to leave when another Malifaux player walked in (joy)!

We started flipping for the strategy, picked our crews, etc and we already had people asking us, "How do you play that? No dice?" Over the course of the game about six people total commented on how they'd like to get into Malifaux. During the game multiple people kept asking to look at our crew's cards (those that we'd activated already) - and we weren't even trying to promote so much as get a casual game in. A local league is starting in April and I'm hoping that will spark even more interest around here.

[IntereoVivo]

And i know, in Malifaux bad things happen... but it never hurts to let the new guy win the first game. (just don't make it too obvious. lol)

I can't stress this enough. Malifaux is a game with a fairly high learning curve and one of the most demoralizing things that can happen to a new player (we have had a couple instances of this where I play) is getting crushed out of the gate. Make sure that new players are getting to use their models, not just moving and losing them. We're slowly adding more players but we have at least two who, after getting stomped in three games running have pretty much given it up.