M2E or as I now call it. Malifaux

I like the new edition of Malifaux. This is not something I have been keeping a big secret or anything. But for the most part I just haven't been talking about it. 1st Generation Awesome Mike put up a list of the big changes that we saw get implemented for the new edition and I wanted to take a second to talk about them. This way I can just hash out what I like and what I dislike about them.

Upgrades – This is pretty much the part of Malifaux that I am the most hesitant about. I like that they introduced a way to specialze a crew, I like the idea of optional complexity. My big concern is right now there appear to be auto-include upgrades, and never include upgrades. Not a whole lot of the sometime takes. I really like what this system could potentially be. But as its currently set up I feel like its lacking.

Pre-measuring - Might be my absolute favorite change to the game. No more, I was off by .021421 inches, and therefore my entire plan falls to crap.

Card Format - This is an asthetic change. The cards are now smaller, fitting into the standard card size for most CCG's. Im cool with this change as it means I wont have to go laminate my cards every month when I get a new model. I'll just buy a box of sleeves from my LGS and get to gaming!

Strategy / Schemes - I like them. It seems they took a lot of the best ideas they had over the past several attempts to make the missions and worked out a core few. Balancing 13 missions is really tough. I like that they have a "competative" pack of 5 missions that will more geared towards tournament and the like. Plus I like the feel of these missions. The Schemes are cool in my mind too. I grew to really like the scheme pool. Prevents Body-Guard / Kill Protege every game.

Extra AP - This is a mixed bag. Masters all just flat out get 3 AP now. That is nice and makes them feel more powerful as they should. But a lot of the higher stone Minion models no longer have bonus AP. Thats a bit of a mixed bag for me. In the early stuff Ressers never got extra AP, so to a career resser player this is just evening out the field. But overall I think this move kind of makes some of the more expensive centerpiece guys a little less cool.

Terrifying / Horror - In one fell swoop they made this stronger and Nerfed it. And I love it. They made Horror a lot more regular, then they made it so that its no longer just ignore by 70% of the field, and then they nerfed the penalty for failure. I am 100% down with this decision.

Ranged Attacks - Not really my thing. I dont play shooty crews. Ranges got kinda long. In some cases I feel like they are stupid long. But I also think their damage was dropped a bit. I think in the end Range is a bit stronger then it was in V1, but thats not a terrible thing since in V1 it had a lot of weakness.

Spells as duels - Good change. It was always odd to me that spells were randomly different from the rest of the games core mechanics.

Number of turns - At first I didnt think this would matter, but over the course of several games I saw why it was big. You no longer have the time to ignore your objective early, kill everything and snag them at the end. You have to focus on them all game. Its an interesting change and one Im mostly on board for.

Charges - They seem a bit skewed in powerlevel. Charging is a (2) action. But you get to move 1.5x your speed (on average) and then make 2 melee attacks. your spending (2) ap to get 3.5 ap worth of actions. Its strong. Not sure it breaks the game or anything. But it is one of the best and most efficient maneuvers in the game.

Soulstones - Overall Im a fan of the change to Soulstones. Im not sure I like how many Henchmen there are who can use them. But their uses are all good to me. I like that Master v Master fights dont really devolve into who flipped a better stone card anymore. And I really like the Draw 2 cards ditch 2 cards mechanic.

Effects - The fact that this wsa never defined in V1 always annoyed me. Now its been defined and everything makes a lot more sense. Well done Wyrd.

Model updating - This has to be the biggest change right? Every model in the game is now different. And at the end of the day I love it. You can feel free to disagree with me on this, but I came to feel that there were serious balance issues with V1. Im not saying issues won't crop up in the future, or that they are all gone now. But the big thing here is that we know what we are working with, and we know what is coming. Its rare that a game company is able to see into the future and balance a game to that level. This was a chance for Wyrd to do just that, and they did it. I play a lot of different masters over quite a few factions. And in my eyese not one of them has lost their old flavor. In a lot of cases, such as Seamus, Marcus, and Rasputina, they were able to keep their old feel, but also become competative and damn near playable. That is a big change to me, and one Im damn happy with

Mike did not include the new direction of Malifaux's art in his change list, but I want to talk about it. It is a mixed bag. Unfortunetly most of that bag is bad. Below is my prime example of what I dislike about the Art.

Seamus always struck me as the charming psycho. The guy who could lure someone to their death. Now he looks like the stung out junkie with a white panel van. A complete shift in the characters visual appearance and to me it changes who he is. I am trying to get down with the new art, but so far a lot of it doesn't appeal to me at all.

Last thing for me is the thing that surprises me most thus far about Malifaux. I had been focusing my efforts on Seamus, Nicodem, and McMouring during the Beta stages. I know them inside and out and felt I could help out a lot in balancing them. But as I moved away from testing games and more into just playing for fun, I found that the Master I enjoyed playing the most was Marcus. His new beast crew is just seriously fun! The best part is that beasts with blue boarders no longer blow!