New Player - Where Do I Start?

[PrimeEagle]

I've never played Malifaux, but I'd like to give it a try. I've played Warmachine and Hordes for a few years, plus a ton of other non-tapletop games. I'm finding it a little difficult to find definitive information on what to start with.

1. I see there's a 1E and 2E. I'm assuming I should start with 2E. But it doesn't look like all the factions have starter boxes for 2E. One that caught my eye was "Ten Thunders", for example. Can these still be used? If so, where do I get the 2E cards for the models?

2. Which starter boxes (either 2E or 1E+2E cards) are good choices to start with?

3. Also, regarding terrain. I was looking at the WorldWorks terrain packs. Which one is a good one to start with?

4. Besides a starter box, terrain, and the 2E rule book, what else would I need? I already have things like random tokens and tape measures.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide!

[Brewmaster]

First off, welcome to Malifaux! I've also dipped into Privateer Press works and obviously where you need to start is the entire faction of gobbers, the Gremlins!

Seriously though, what you'll need is rules, some 30mm bases for 1-2 different types of markers and some 50mm bases (dependent on faction), a tape measure, and a full deck of cards. The Malifaux ones are ideal, but a normal deck with two distinct Jokers will be fine.

The models from either edition will work in 2e because Wyrd has done an awesome thing and provided faction decks (arsenal decks). All models will eventually be covered in the arsenal decks, so no issues there.

---------- Post added at 09:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:51 AM ----------

As for good starter boxes... What would your favorite Warmachine and Horde faction be?

[St. Murphy]

Also good to note that the 2e rules for the models were broken into wave 1 and wave 2. Wave 1 is included in the Rule book and in card form in the Arsenal packs. The rules for rest of the models will be in wave 2, but can be accessed in their beta iterations here.

[PrimeEagle]

Thanks! This really helps. Any advice on the terrain?

[Brewmaster]

Personal preference is Buildings of Malifaux, but honestly, that's a preference thing more than a "this is better" thing.

[PrimeEagle]

Cool, I've been leaning toward both the Building and Streets.

Also, I notice some box sets are mixed factions, like "Arcanist/Ten Thunders Box Set". I haven't read the rules yet, but is faction mixing allowed, unlike Warmachine?

[Brewmaster]

The "dual faction" thing is an element that makes the game more adaptable. You must still choose one faction (Ten Thunders for example), but a "Warcaster" who's Ten Thunders/Arcanist can be hired by both factions.

[DocSchlock]

Mixed Factions are actually Dual Faction: some of the models in the box are of both factions. One of the first steps in starting a game is declaring which faction you're using and thus you hire models accordingly.

For example: Lucas McCabe of the Guild is also a Ten Thunders model. If I declare Guild, I can pick McCabe as my Master. If I declare Ten Thunders, I can still pick McCabe as my Master.

Edit: sniped by Brewmaster

[Rhellion]

Cool, I've been leaning toward both the Building and Streets.

It will take 2 packs of Buildings, 1 pack of Streets, and 4 sets of Clips to make a decent 3x3 table out of Terraclips. I've done this and it is fun to play on, but is time consuming to assemble and hard to transport.

For ease of set of and more variety, I would first suggest building onto whatever Warmachine terrain you already have. trees, hills, buildings, wall sections, etc from Warmachine all work well. You just need MORE.

If you're set on Terraclips, this is what 2 Buildings and a Street set built me. I still change up from time to time and build a full board, but more often lately I just use the buildings standing alone rather than a fully assembled table.

http://www.wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?32425-My-new-Terraclips-board

[DavicusPrime]

Greetings! I've been playing Malifaux for just over a year and am loving it. You've chosen a great time to enter the game with the spiffy new edition.

1 & 4) Three non-model things you need to start with: Get the M2E rules! Get a Deck of cards for each player. And get or make some round 30mm and 50mm markers. The 30mm markers are used all over the place in this game as a mechanic for completing schemes and strategies to marking resources left after a model is killed (corpses, scrap, etc.). The 50mm markers are most often used for weapons that include blast effects, but some models can create temporary terrain effects represented by 50mm markers too. Folks have put together art work you can print out to use... The pdf's in the post linked here I found very useful. Print them out on card or glue them to card (like I did) and you're set for very little cost.

2) Models: I would caution you against buying the older box sets. Only because they don't contain the same mix of models the new sets have (or will have when they finally get released). The new boxed sets come with a master, his/her totem and an associated henchman along with a few of their common enforcers and/or minions. The old boxed sets typically did not include the totem nor did they have the henchman. So you'll end up buying a boxed set plus a pair of blisters to get the totem and henchman that the new boxed sets tend to include. If the models you want aren't released yet, it looks like they're releasing the wave one boxed sets at a rate of two a month (every model in the rulebook is wave 1). So hopefully the wait won't be too long.

Since you play Warmachine, I suspect that you'll have lots of models on 30mm bases that could be used to proxy a lot of the models in Malifaux. If none of the current M2E box sets strike your fancy, the card info in the rulebook and some proxies ought to cover you for the time being. If you have a solid idea as to which faction you want to start with, grabbing the appropriate arsenal deck would be a good start. Ten Thunders represents a bunch of infiltrators thus all of their masters are dual faction, meaning that they can be used as Ten Thunders or the other faction marked on their cards. Unless you are planning to go Gremlin, Ten thunders is going to add a 4th master to your pool, so grabbing their arsenal deck isn't a bad move either. Plus all of their boxed sets used the same design philosophy as the new M2E sets, so you'd be safe grabbing them now.

3) Terrain...

For ease of set of and more variety, I would first suggest building onto whatever Warmachine terrain you already have. trees, hills, buildings, wall sections, etc from Warmachine all work well. You just need MORE.

Seconded! I was able to re-purpose all of my 40K terrain that wasn't overtly high-tech. I added a set each of Streets and Buildings of Malifaux to the mix to add malifaux'ish structures to my trees, hills and rocks and that covered us for the first year of playing malifaux. I've since started adding some more themed terrain elements to the existing stuff at my typically slow pace.

Hope that helps.

-DavicusPrime

Edited December 12, 2013 by DavicusPrime

[zFiend]

For terrain there is a bloke called harbinger on these forums who just made an initial successful funding process. He makes the most awesome pieces of terrain. Especially for Malifaux, so I would definitely contact him for more info on when they are available again.

[PrimeEagle]

Thanks, everyone! I ordered 3 starting boxes (for myself and my two kids), one set each of Buildings and Streets, some Fate decks, and I even managed to find a 2E rulebook in stock. Can't wait for it to come in!

[Darwin_green]

honestly, as far as terrain goes, you should be fine with Warmachine terrain.

Warmahordes is more super-science as far as the steam-tech goes, but otherwise the western/victorian thing works fine.