Product Code Database
Malifaux is a skirmish-level miniatures wargame created by Wyrd Miniatures in 2009 that simulates gang warfare in the ruins of the eponymous city of Malifaux and its surrounding wilderness. The publisher has created several expansions for the game through three editions.
Each player constructs a team of characters, all of whom have, in addition to standard combat and movement abilities, special powers. At the start of the combat, each player is given a random objective for the game, such as assassinating the opposing team leader or controlling certain portions of the game map.
Each player alternates activating one of their characters, using movement, combat and special powers to inflict damage on opposing characters.
The game proved popular and Wyrd Games quickly published expansions with more characters and miniatures, including Rising Powers (2010) and Twisting Fates (2011).
In 2013, Wyrd Games released a second edition of the game, followed by a third edition in 2019.
For their 3rd Edition, Wyrd Games collaborated with developer Damien Zeke Liergard to create and support their gaming app called Malifaux Crew Builder. It allows users to manage their games while referencing all the characters and associated rules.
In Issue 19 of The Ancible, Robey Jenkins thought that what set Malifaux apart was three qualities. The first: "its innovative random number generating mechanics." The second: "its use of named characters. Malifaux doesn't use named characters as simply colour elements on the battlefield, but effectively implements them as complex building blocks that must be fitted together to give the perfect combination." And the third: "combinations. Whoever initiates their combo first usually wins."
In their 2016 book Tabletop Wargames : A Designers' and Writers' Handbook, Rick Priestley and John Lambshead used Malifaux as an example of game using "the technique of highly characterised models exporting complex and detailed rules about individual characters out of the core rules and onto cards, which are placed onto the tabletop in front of players to be consulted as and when they are needed."
In a review for Dicebreaker, Michael Whelan wrote that "Malifaux is incredibly evocative and comes with some interesting new takes on the miniature wargaming formula" but noted that "the small and quite finicky models can be absolute hell to put together."
|
|
