Review: Malifaux First Impressions

I have been watching Wyrd miniatures for a while now, making sure to look over my shoulder ever now again to see if anything new cropped up (much like I treat Freebooter and Dark Sword).  A few weeks before Thanksgiving I had the chance to play a few learning games (I have multiple rules sets that I have never played, er... umm..., Flames of War).  So the following impression is based on play, although not full fledged skirmishes with all the bells and whistles.

The rulebook:
Malifaux rulebook is in many ways very similar to Privateer Press rulebooks- a running story across factions, great illustration, rules that make sense on the surface and everything you need in one book. 

As you don't use dice, there are a lot of easy to read two row tables to show what the various totals for cards mean.  One of the things that I didn't even catch until I sat down to write this review was, not once in the rule section, was there a figure for model positioning.  Unlike GW and PP games where you are constantly shown diagrams for charge lanes, line of sight, cover, etc, Malifaux means everything off the base and height values so those drawings are not needed.  Can this model? (Answer: I dunno, can you draw an uninterrupted line?).  There has been substantial errata posted on the website forum, and this appears updated routinely.  Most of the rule errors are simply grammatical.  The faction/model errata is where the significant changes occur.  Some of them I caught reading the book the first time, for instance, why was the generic Guild Guard a Unique member of the Family.  I wager in two years we'll get the Infinity treatment, and get a really polished near perfect revised rulebook.

The actual production value of the book--written and illustration, and even layout-- is very nice.  The fiction starts with nice overviews of the grim Victorian characters showing primary role.  When it concludes, you feel as if you get just enough to realize how open and desperate the world of Malifaux is.  Very little has purely good, and near everything has the taint of either evil or malice.  From the simple line drawings to the full color chatper pages, the art is of premium grade. 

The missions are highly varied, and the system even allows for secret objectives.  One of the things I am always interested in are asymmetrical object based scenarios.  Malifaux has a random primary objective (a strategy) and optionally, secretly chose secondary objectives (schemes) at the your own, not the game's, discretion.  So you might very well in up with defend an objective with one crew and kill their leader on the other. Further terrain features heavily into most objectives.

The models:
They have a strange Weird West- Steampunk- Victoriana flavor.  And it works.  Models are 28-32mm, but not heroic.  No elven archer hands here.  Some of the earlier models in the range are nasty to put together, having very fine chains or wrist joints.  New models are often single piece, or hidden joins.  In quality, they are comparable to Infinity in so many ways, including assembly.Recently, more single piece models have shown up, and they are very well done.  A little twisting of an arm with padded pliers, and you can completely remove the flat effect which single piece models often suffer from.

The game play:
I have only had a few games, mostly just moving Lady Justice around for a charge on Saemus.  The game does play fast.  There is a resource allocation system, soulstones, similiar to Warchmachines focus mechanic, with major exception-- you only get an initial alotment, they don't come back every turn.

The game a feel similar to low model count Warmachine.  Flip cards, add, compare.  The twist and cheat (which are the actual game terms for it), is swapping cards from your hand to with those in play, or using a soulstone to add an additional card.  Additionally, all weapons have ranges, even melee weapons.  So the base to base contact isn't as crazy as in some games and the rue melee monsters, have much longer melee ranges.   Damage actually scales based on a damage flip, with no damage always being a nasty 1/54 chance (flipping is the card equivalent to a dice roll).

So that is my quick first impression of Malifaux.  As I get more time to play more meaningful games and paint up some models, I'll be sure to come back for a more informed impression.