Malifaux Musing - Why I Play
Written By: Jay Edwards
I started writing this article as some sterile guide to the “best” way to get into Malifaux, but something felt off about it. Yeah, I could rattle off all the reasons why Malifaux is different and the steps to getting into it, but I would just be trying to apply a blanket method to everyone that might not work for each situation. So, I’m just going to tell you how I got into Malifaux.
Back in the early 2010s, my friends and I were getting into 40k but we were poor university students so it really felt like a pipe dream. Even when we could scrounge together a measly 1,000 points worth of models together, we’d get looked down on by the local grognards for our non-codex compliant paint schemes. One day, we were playing a game at a small local store (RIP Imagine Hobbies) when someone started putting out a rack of models that we had never seen before. We were interested and asked about this new game called “Malifaux”. The clerk didn’t know a ton about it, but she did have a rulebook available that we could buy. One of us bought it and we spent a good chunk of that evening in his basement, watching anime and reading the rulebook.
I’m not going to pretend that it was love at first sight or anything cliche like that, but we did eventually go back into the store and we each bought a different starter box (Hamelin for me, Rasputina and Nicodem for the other two). Once we built our crews and started playing, gears started to turn in my head. This felt different to 40k, Fire and Fury, or any other mini game I had played until that point. The alternating activations had me thinking a couple turns ahead. The cards in my hand made me think about the probabilities of flipping the right card. I was trying to figure out what Scheme my opponent had to block them out of points. It just felt like I had a lot more control over everything. It felt better.
A few months later, we find out that there’s a second edition coming out for the game. Our little group was crushed because we were used to 40k edition changes; vast changes to how armies play, new models that were important to have, and the possibility of waiting years for a new codex. But… that didn’t happen. A new rulebook was released, changing a couple things in the core rules, and free updates for models were issued on the forum. It was more of a minor shift rather than a complete overhaul. We just kept trucking along, stopping occasionally to refresh ourselves on the new rules, but overall there wasn’t much that changed.
Then the “cataclysm” happened. Wyrd had brought players to beta test the 3rd edition of Malifaux. It was meant to be a large overhaul on how the game was played, simplifying everything to make it streamlined, and everyone knew it was going to take a while. Then… someone leaked the entire edition change. Suddenly, the community kind of fell apart as people saw the unfinished changes and weren’t happy with them. We saw that new models were coming and people just stopped buying models because the new 3E models were going to be plastic (instead of the largely metal models we were dealing with at the time). With players not buying Malifaux, stores stopped bringing it in. Honestly, it looked like the game was dead and no one would pick it up again. I put my models away and kind of forgot about the game.
A few years passed and I was in another store when I spotted some new Malifaux models on the shelf. Turns out that 3E had actually come out and there were a couple people that had bought new stuff! I looked at the models and they were amazing quality. I quickly ordered a rulebook and I read through it in a couple hours. It was a lot simpler and looked really fun, so I reached out to a couple people that I had been told played and arranged a game day at the local store. Soon, we had a little community that grew quickly. Now, after only a couple years, we’ve got a strong core group of players and a tournament every couple of months. Since I put my models away, the game has only gotten better.
Wyrd came out with a free app for players to get their updated rules, track their games, and read the weekly articles that the company put out. The models had become easier to assemble while still having an incredible level of detail. The crews had a lot more personality with a ton of storytelling potential. Everything that made my love the game in the first place had gotten deeper and stronger. And, even though there had been a major edition change since I last played, the game still felt the same, just better.
What’s the point of this story? Honestly, I’m not quite sure anymore. Maybe just some ramblings of an old man, but I think it shows something important about Malifaux: stability. Over almost 2 decades since its release in 2009, the game still feels as good as it did back when I first picked it up. Wyrd hasn’t felt the need to completely change the game every few years to keep people buying things and to “change for the sake of change”. An investment in the game a decade ago hasn’t suddenly gotten useless because new models have come out or because the rules have been flipped on their head.
Malifaux takes place in a world on the other side of a rift over a century ago. The world is filled with monsters, swindlers, and the insane. It should feel foreign and alien, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. Malifaux is my gaming home; soft, comfortable, and familiar. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
