My Warmachine Weekend and Thoughts on Malifaux

At Gencon I found myself at a strange place.  I am certainly a huge fan of Wyrd, but was disappointed with their releases.  Expecting a fair chunk more given the initial estimates of 70-80% of their line, I was hoping for more than just Jakob to play with.

At the same time, Privateer Press had some very interesting products.  I hadn’t been following them closely, so I didn’t know much of what would be out.  I knew Level 7 would be there, as would the IK RPG.  I managed to get the former, and got to play the latter.

As a result of my waning interest in Wyrd’s products, and my being impressed with Privateer Press’s, I started thinking I wanted to play some more Warmachine.  Conveniently, our local Press Ganger was running an event this past weekend for smaller-scale Warmachine armies (35 points) to just come to the store and play a lot.  I dusted off my Cygnar and brought it out to the table.

 

I managed to get three games in, each one quite different from the others.  I’m not going to go through a blow-by-blow of the games (mostly because I don’t know the rules well enough to know what was happening) but I’ll give some overall general impressions.

The first thing I noticed when pulling out a list in my first game was that the game is a lot bigger than I remember it.  I haven’t played the game really since back in MK1 days.  I used to have a hard time putting together a list because I found myself having to cut and get my list down under the points.  Now I found myself tossing in more stuff because I had plenty of space in my list size.

Another thing I quickly learned was that I knew very little about some basic rules.  Unit cohesion, squad leaders, morale checks all worked a bit differently than before.  It wasn’t really a big deal – my opponents were pretty open to helping me out with my gaps in knowledge, but I could tell just how much my decisions were hampered by things I didn’t know.

Two of my games ended very similarly.  In one of them, my opponent popped his feat, rushed his models through my army without me being able to stop him, and plowed into my caster.  Luck was on my side and I managed to survive with one wound remaining, but I wasn’t able to turn the tables on him the next turn and he finished me off.  The other game, I had my wall of jacks in between me and my opponent, but he managed to get his warlock jumping over my jacks, engaged with my caster, and took me from full-to-dead in one hit, then moved back to safety to face other opponents.

Both of the games were good lessons, reminding me how little I knew about the game anymore.  My brain is currently set to a Malifaux-style of play rather than a Warmachine style of play.  I found myself looking at the board and trying to control area on the board rather than looking directly for an assassination run.  I got caught flat-footed and died both times due to it.

My other game went a bit differently.  I found myself on the wrong side of a very good opponent who spent the game locking me down but keeping me alive so he could win the game and get the most objective points for the day’s event.  I learned a bit there, and managed to nearly deliver a killing blow earlier on in the game (one wound short, just like had been done to me), but pretty quickly he had me in a position where I could not do anything back.

At the end of the day, I had to look back at my games and consider what my plan was with Warmachine.  I recognize that most of my failings came from not knowing the rules and models, neither the ones I was playing with nor the ones I was playing against.  I came to the question of whether I would want to spend the time filling in those gaps.

I would enjoy continuing Warmachine, I don’t doubt.  I would go through a period of painful defeats while I learned what things did on the board, but I don’t doubt I would end up a pretty good Warmachine player once more.

But I have already spent the time learning the same from Malifaux, a game I already do enjoy.

An interesting point I found was that what I hear as complaints about Malifaux – that there are abilities that are too powerful or the game is too broken – were things I could see someone else saying about Warmachine having walked away with my experiences.  In all three games, a warcaster/warlock was killed or knocked down to 1 life from full in a single round.  In one of the games, I was effectively locked down to the point where the last half-hour of the game felt as frustrating as I’m sure some early Malifaux games feel for others.

What I came away with was that there was very little difference between the two games in that area.  Both games have super-powered abilities and models.  That’s kinda the point of them.  It’s the other areas that you have to determine which of the two you favor.

Warmachine is based around setting up full turns of all your models working together.  It has a single prize that you need to keep your eye on.  The groups are larger and terrain is less important.

Malifaux requires you to spend more time reacting to the changing battle since your opponent almost always has a chance to react to your combinations.  You have to keep track of a half dozen different objectives throughout the game.  There are fewer models on the table.

Both require an investment of time and patience to learn to play well.  Both are great games.

I’ve spent the time learning Malifaux, and I still enjoy it.  I prefer the size and objectives of Malifaux to those of Warmachine.  My brief weekend with Warmachine was fun, but I’m ready to put it back on the shelf and re-devote myself to Malifaux.