It wasn’t very kind of Wyrd Games to release the Malifaux 4th Edition open beta right in the middle of our league season. All the rules were rewritten; everything was different. My current crew, December, doesn’t even have cards yet, so I was forced to fall back on my old crew, Foundry, and do the best I could.
Since this is just the open beta, I had to print out the cards, rulebooks, schemes and strats myself. Since many of my key models were no longer available, I had to quickly assemble and paint a bunch of others. I talked about this in a post from a few days back, so I won’t repeat it all here.
The Foundry keyword was mostly about insane mobility as well as some fairly decent damage with a crew that was pretty armored and hard to kill. That’s mostly gone away – and gone-away-and-sealed-with-a-kiss with Mei Feng, Foreman, the revised version of the master that I usually play.
The team tonight was: Mei Feng, Foreman (master); Rock Hopper (totem); Kang (henchman); Neil Henry (enforcer); Steel Worker (née Rail Worker); Willie (token and marker exploder); Metal Golem (enforcer); Shadow Effigy (minion); and Shadow Emissary (dragon).
The opposing team was Captain Zipp, an annoying little goblin who thinks he is Buck Rogers and zips (heh) around firing his ray gun. Goblins are among the creatures humans found when they went through the Breach into Malifaux, but they probably aren’t native to it. Most of their Infamous keywork flies, is hard to kill, and can only be easily targeted when you are very close to them.
Strategy was Informants, score a point each turn based on who controls more key points. Loser each round gets to move two of them up to 4" to a better spot.
My first scheme was… I don’t remember the name, but my master had to take damage while she was wholly on the other side of the board. I wasn’t able to set that up before turn 2, so no point for me on the first turn. Completing that scheme gave me a selection of three new schemes from which to choose; I went with Harnessing the Ley Lines, which is having two scheme markers at least 10" apart on the center line. I made that easily on turn 3. Turn 4, the last turn, I chose Make It Look Like an Accident, which is scored if I push someone off a building. At that time, Shadow Emissary and Zipp’s First Mate were on a building, and I thought it would be an easy score, but First Mate jumped off before I could score it, and nobody went on a building after that.
Final score was 8-2; Zipp scored strategies all four turns, for five points (last turn scores double in 4th edition), and three schemes. I just got points for the two schemes I managed.
Zipp’s crew never really sat still long enough for me to get the scrap markers in the right place to do some damage. Nonetheless, my crew was pretty powerful, and I killed more models than I usually do. Which was good for Zipp; he needed soul stones, and me killing his models earned him some, and also allowed him to pass turns so that his master, Captain Zipp, could spend his turn moving me out of scoring positions.
3e Foundry had a bunch of solid moves that made it unique. I’m not really sure 4e Foundry can say the same. Mei Feng, Foreman doesn’t have ride the rails; it’s replaced by a pulse that forces enemy models near a scrap marker to flip high or take 2 damage. Foundry models can hand out negative conditions, then follow up with extra damage or other effects. In practice, though, I couldn’t hand out as many as I wanted, and the Zipp models, having high mobility, typically would just leave before I could do anything with them.
The first time I played against Zipp, I really didn’t have an answer to his high mobility, and I still don’t. I wasn’t able to get the **Perforate **token on Zipp—a new 4e mechanic that punishes a model for moving, onto Zipp, but even if I had, it’s easy to remove. Many of the things I want to do to enemy models takes a soul stone, and either it doesn’t affect the enemy much, or it is easy to remove. Me paying a soul stone – a very limited resource – to cost them one action point is not a good bargain.
Informants required mobility I just no longer have without Mechanical Porkchop and Ride the Rails. Perhaps another strategy would be a different story.
It was fun; the game is definitely more streamlined. It did take three hours for four turns (down from five for 3e), but it was a new crew, new rules, and there was a lot of card reading going on. It’ll get faster. A two hour game is definitely achievable.
Anyway, breath of relief there, I can go back to painting Frosthaven models now…