Malifaux M2E - Privateer Press and Wyrd Open Beta Experiences

I haven’t been shy about my gaming history.  For miniatures games, it’s actually been pretty light on different systems.  I got into miniatures well after most of my other gaming, and the first game I played a lot of was Warmachine.  The second game I played a lot of was Malifaux.

I was around both games when they went through a major edition shift.  I was thinking back to my days at the Privateer Press world.

Warmachine

I played a lot of Warmachine – usually hitting up the game store once a week or more to get a few games in.  I started my Cygnar when Escalation came around and played through into Mark 2.  There were a lot of issues with the rules – none that made the game impossible to play, but certainly fiddly ones that made the game a little off if you didn’t keep up with the rule changes on the forums.  These rules problems didn’t come up every game, but they came up frequently enough.

Mark 2’s open beta came up and I gave the game a good go.  I tested, enjoyed what I was testing a bit, but I didn’t quite feel like the game was what I enjoyed playing.  It all felt a bit off.  The game size was increasing drastically, and what I enjoyed in Cygnar – playing a melee-based army – was becoming less viable.

I ended up leaving the game behind shortly after Warmachine Mark 2 was officially launched and drifted for a while before finding my next miniatures game.

Malifaux

I ended up picking up Malifaux probably six months after it was launched at GenCon.  I played through with Neverborn through the first couple books, then spread into Ressers when I saw Avatar Seamus in the third book, and picked up Guild with the arrival of McHammish in the fourth book.

I love Classic Malifaux, but I also recognize there were certainly places the game could be polished.  Playing casually was okay, but every few games you’d run into a rules interaction that required a lot of head-scratching or a run to the rules forum to determine.  Sometimes those expanded into questions about “Attack” versus “attack” or “Damage” versus “Wounds”.

When M2E was announced, I had a number of thoughts of what I’d like to see changed.  When I got my first chance to see it, a lot more had changed than I expected.  Similar to my reaction with Warmachine, I was initially put off by all the changes.  I don’t like a lot of change personally.  I had immediate flashbacks to how I went through the Warmachine Mark 2 test and the end results.  I prepared myself for the worst.

But my experiences with Warmachine had also helped to prepare me mentally for the changes.  I had been through the loss of a game that I considered my primary game before, and come out okay at the other end.  Second Generation Awesome Dan once called me pessimistic because I said that I expected there would be a time where I didn’t play Malifaux anymore.  The same thing had happened with Warmachine, after all.  Through that lens, it was easier to deal with.

Add to that the fact that Wyrd was giving me an opportunity to influence how the game would end up.  I made a deal with myself: I would not drop out of the playtesting until it was done.  I would endure the bad parts of the game and work to make them better.  I would put in more effort to put the game on what I felt was the right track now because it could influence the game for an entire new edition.  After all, I reasoned, if I dropped out of playtesting, or if I complained loudly but without substance, I had only myself to blame if the game did not come out well at the end of the tunnel.  Wyrd was giving me the opportunity to make recommendations.  Wyrd had demonstrated they would listen to us.  If at release the game was still not something I wanted to play, I would leave it behind and move on to the next game.  But if they moved it to something I enjoyed, I would have (at least in my mind) made the game into something I would enjoy for years to come.

With that philosophy, I went back into the game and tested the heck out of it.  Some things worked.  Some didn’t.  Sometimes they listened to me.  Sometimes they ignored me.  Sometimes I was on the majority side clamoring for a change or to maintain the status quo.  Sometimes I felt like a lone voice.  But whatever came up, I tried to remove all emotion from the post and present a sound and logical rational for the issue.

And you know what?  The game did change.  Slowly at first, but every iteration moved the game closer and closer to a system that I enjoy to the point where now I have a hard time finding a compelling reason (other than all the models not being available yet… an issue to be resolved before the year is out) to go back to v1.

Things could still prove to come out wrong at the end, I fully recognize that.  I’m still holding myself to the same deal I made when I was on the other end of the “excitement for M2E” spectrum.  I will not make my final decision until I see the final product.  But the way things are looking right now, I’m quite excited for the release at GenCon.

To those who are disappointed in M2E, I am not discounting your opinions.  If my experiences with WM gave me any lesson, it’s this: every game is not for every player.  I immensely enjoyed the first version of Warmachine.  I did not enjoy the second one.  But I can’t with a straight-face say it’s a bad system.  If anything, I have a hard time arguing that it’s not a better system now than it was before.  The game is more popular than it ever has been.  But at the same time, it’s not the game for me anymore.

M2E is still in a stage where it can change.  If you do not like something about the game, now is the time to try to make changes.  Already with the first wave of changes in open beta, a lot has seen adjustment.  It’s clear they are listening to us.  Take heart in that.

But if the game ends up being something that you don’t want to play anymore on the other end of release, that’s okay too.  I don’t look back at Warmachine with anger for them changing the game.  I remember the years of enjoyment I got out of it when I was playing.  I hope that people who leave Malifaux after v1 will look back the same way.

Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying

Over the past weekend, one of my roleplaying groups decided to pick up the Iron Kingdoms roleplaying game and give it a try.  Several of us managed to play over Gencon and enjoyed it, but since then we’ve been playing a few other games instead.  Dan volunteered to run a quick one-shot session and made up some characters for us to use.

We had four different players and decided we wanted to make sure we had a few specific character types, just to try out the system.  We needed to have someone with a Steamjack, someone who was good with magic spells, and someone who was melee-oriented.  If possible, we wanted to try both spell-caster types (wilders and focusers), and maybe get some gunwork in there too.

Our characters came out like this:

Brian played a Field Mechanic / Arcane Mechanic with a steamjack at his disposal.  He was a Gifted Wilder.

Ellen played a Warcaster / Duelist with warcaster armor and an extra armor-boosting spell.  She was a Gifted Focuser.

Mary played a Pirate / Thief with a bit of sneaking and a lot of skills.  She was the type of character that could attack twice in a round, though we forgot to use her second attack the entire game.

I was a Stormblade / Knight with the Intellect character type, so I would give a +1 to hit and +1 to damage to everyone near me.

We used models for our fights, and rather than using a blank canvas and measuring in inches with our tape measures, we went ahead and used a square grid from our Dungeons and Dragons days.

The game was pretty straight forward.  We started with investigating a jailbreak by a notorious thief.  We were not the only bounty hunters on his trail, and as we tracked him, another group came by and instigated aggression against us (by nudging one of our horses off the shared trail).  We responded with appropriate force (by killing them all).

Soon we tracked down the bad guy and his group of merry men, talked our way into getting an opportunity to sneak up on him, and then had a huge fight.  At the end of the day, when his men were all defeated and he was at sword-point, he offered us money to let him go and we negotiated a nice settlement in exchange for giving him a one-day head start.  We ended the session there, having had the opportunity to see what we wanted to see from the system.

My thoughts were as follows:

1.       I remember enjoying the system at Gencon.  I really enjoyed it now too.  We had to do a little bit of digging through the book to make sure we were doing certain things right, having never really played before, but it was grounded enough in the Warmachine system that we didn’t have to work too hard at it.

2.       It’s a lethal system.  Despite the fact that it started out feeling like a DnD game, my character got hit twice and had one hit point left.  Where in DnD your HP increase every level.  Your character is constantly going to be a hit or two away from dying.  I like that.  In Legend of the Five Rings, a lot of interaction between players is facilitated by knowing that if you do not try to talk your way through a problem, you could very easily end up dead.

3.       Fate Points are really good and should be used often.  I think I used them the most of everyone in the group, yet I never had a lack of them.  They come back to you when you defeat an enemy or when you roll a critical success on your skill checks, so you’re going to be getting them back often.  And the things they can do are strong.  Prevent damage, heal wounds, reroll attacks, help skill checks, etc.  They are the thing that set PCs apart from NPCs, and you shouldn’t sit on them waiting for the “right time”.  I think you should always make sure you are down by at least one, because you never know when you’re going to get one back.

4.       Stormblade / Knights are awesome.  Even without taking the extra attack, my character was getting 2-3 attacks in a round.  I would attack.  If I killed that person (with a two-handed Storm Glaive it wasn’t that uncommon to do), I would attack again.  If someone near me was hit, I would attack again (once per turn).  There are ways to get unreal amounts of damage out there early on.

5.       Armor is king.  The only reason I was able to survive as well as I was is because I had a high armor, and Ellen’s Warcaster would keep up an armor-boosting spell.  The POW of most weapons was not incredibly high – usually in the 8-10 range.  My character’s ARM 17 made him a tank.  Add in the fact that Fate Points could heal me and I was sitting pretty.

6.       Charging is key.  There are no ways to boost damage that I could find in my character other than charging an enemy.  And once you charged, you would put out a third die of damage, which would usually wreck enemies.

The game has an obvious focus on the combat system, much like Dungeons and Dragons.  There are social skills available, but their system is generally just a skill check.  One thing I appreciate about the way that Iron Kingdoms does it, though, is that they use the 2d6 rather than the 1d20 to determine a roll.  In 1d20, you have equal chances to roll a 1 as you do a 10, 11, or 20.  With 2d6, the progression is not linear.  You’re far more likely to roll a 7 than you are a 2 or 12, which allows for a bit more normalcy in the dice rolls.

Overall, we all had a great time with the test run.  Next time we test it out, we might try to get some different characters on the slab.  I’m still looking forward to trying out a Rifleman / Gunmage.  He’s been on my mind since we first played at Gencon.

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.

Updates and Kirai

It's been a while since I've updated on how my gaming is going, so here we have it. Work has been really busy of late so I have not been able to get my battle reports put up. Sadly today's going to be no different. No time for battle reports today either.



The last of my Resser crews, Kirai, is just about ready to field. As part of my new years resolutions, I vowed not to put any unpainted Malifaux stuff on the table, so I'm trying to plow through the last of the crew. I have only 4 Seishin and 2 Gaki left to paint before I feel ready to get them out and on the field. I'll be ready to roll with Kirai, the Lost Love, Datsu'ba, Shikome, 5 Seishin, 2 Gaki, 2 Onriyo, Jack Daw, and 2 Insidious Madnesses. I'm missing the Hanged and Drowned, and possibly more Gaki and another Shikome. But it's enough to get a start. I figure I'll have the last of the crew painted up this weekend and put her up on the table by Tuesday.

Got two games in last Tuesday. The first was a game against Dan. We played a quick 25 stone game: Dreamer with a couple Teddies and Daydreams against the Vikis with some Ronin, Sue and the Student of Conflict. We both took Assassinate and we both took Kill Protege. It wasn't really the plan from the outset, but we ended up with one of the most brutal games I've played in a while. By the end of turn two, I had achieved Assassinate and Kill Protege and he had achieved Kill Protege. By the end of turn four, his army was wiped and I had LCB with a couple wounds left, the Dreamer, and both Daydreams (one of which was buried and the other was too far away to do anything). Hilarious match, especially when we were both just throwing down to waste a little time and ended up playing our entire game in the time it took Brian and Bill to do a couple activations in their game going on at the same time.

Second game was against Tim, a local Neverborn player. I took Seamus and his Avatar and he took Lilith with the twins and Black Blood Shaman. It was a long-drawn game. I hit a couple bad patches with my Dead Rider getting the Black Joker on damage to try to finish off Lelu, and then Avatar Seamus flipping the Black Joker on damage later on at the end of the game. But he had a rough flip of the Black Joker in defense for Lelu when aSeamus finally pasted him. In the end, I couldn't quite get aSeamus to frighten everyone away and lost the game 2-6 when Lilith stuck around my Claim Jump marker and I had only aSeamus left.



Almost got a game of Warmachine in too. I used to play way back in MK1, and when everything moved to MK2, I was getting very excited by the way Cygnar were in the playtest. Then, when the book was released, a lot of what Cygnar did well had been stripped from them and they're back at the bottom of the totem pole again. Still, I love the way the models look and I own a bunch of them, so I brought them out for Slaz to borrow for a game against Dan. If timing was a little different, I would have given them a whirl. Maybe later. I did end up picking up Wrath to thumb through. I'm very excited about the IK RPG coming out soon, and the video on the Colossals looks fantastic. Jay is running a WM league at the store so I might have an easier time finding a game. Just got to pack up three bags of miniatures now instead of one when I head out - one Malifaux and two Warmachine. That's a lot of metal.

Games that Died

These aren't games that have died everywhere. I recognize fully that all four of these games are still played, some with more frequency than others, elsewhere. Heck, some are played with frequency in this area. But these are games that died for me that I have played at one time or another.

I'm not going to include things like Uncharted Seas, which I have played a couple of times but am not playing much since then. The games on this list are some that I have played with some frequency at some point in time. I was thinking about one of them earlier today, and it got me thinking about why some games survive and some don't.



Arcane Legions

The game that I was thinking about that sparked my thinking about this topic was Arcane Legions. At GenCon 2009, this was the game that got my attention and got me pretty excited. It is a fast paced mass army game with some pretty unique mechanics. It wasn't too expensive to get into, though the collectible aspect of it was a turnoff. Fortunately there were not that many models that you needed to get, so it turned out to be affordable. The mechanics were fresh and it was a boatload of fun to play.

So why did it fail? I know it's still a big controversy (I checked their forums today and they're still talking about it), but for our gaming group, we simply could not deal with the archery rules the way they were. Whether archery units are broken in comparison to basic units or not isn't the point. Even when the game was in its infancy, the forums were filled with people harping on the fact that archery was too powerful. The company never addressed this issue, and soon people stopped playing the game, not wanting to play a game where one faction - the Hans who excelled at archery - would win most games where all other things were equal. That the company never addressed these concerns adequately left a sour taste, and soon we were looking for different games to try.

The game continues to flounder. Its first expansion has been put on hold indefinitely as it tries to build its player base. But of course it's hard to build players when there are no new models and toys coming out. To me, this is an example of what could have been a great game being completely mishandled by its company.

Even still, sometimes I look longingly at my models and wouldn't mind getting a game or two in again. Just enough to remind me why I stopped playing in the first place.



Monsterpocalypse

Monsterpocalypse was a game where you'd hit the table with massive monsters, aliens, robots, etc. and fight in a huge city scape. Several of us got into this game, and despite my insistence that I would not buy into it when it first came out, I was quickly convinced that I should and ended up joining the group with my own Martian army.

It was a pretty fun game for a while. But this game suffered from a couple of major issues to me.

First, it was collectible. I had to buy random packs that might come up with things I'd never use, and if I did, I had to hope that my friends got random stuff they'd never use that I would use, and would want to swap with me for the things I got that I didn't want. Annoying. We were able to get around this when we found sites that were selling singles, which was nice, so we didn't have to worry too much about that.

Second, it had collectors versions of all the monsters. This was not a case of "there are a couple of special models you can only get through tournaments", this was a case of "every monster can have a third, different form and you have to do different things to get them." Some you could get by winning tourneys. Some you had to buy a certain amount of product for. But whatever it was, there were a large number of models you simply could not get, and that discouraged me from wanting to play. I'm a completest, and not being able to complete my faction left me unhappy.

Third, and this is the one that really sealed it for me, we found out that every year, the game would cycle out six new factions and "retire" the six old ones. Sure you could keep playing them, but it meant that every year, if I wanted to keep up, I had to drop an entire faction I'd spent time and money on and start all over. For me, it meant it would be a good time to get out of the game, if I was still playing it.

It ended up that I wasn't still playing it at the end of the year. The reason for that is that it lost interest among my group. Their reasons for dropping it had less to do with the way it was being released like mine did, and more with the fact that many times, the game came down to "who got the first chance to throw their opponent through a string of buildings." When one powerful move could win games, it became frustrating.



Warhammer 40k

I know this game isn't dead. All I'm just saying it didn't appeal to me, and figured I should explain why.

Honestly, I don't know so much why this one didn't work for me. It's a decent enough game. It was fun the couple times I played it. I have an army that looks interesting to me. I think I can come up with a couple of the feelings I have when I think about it.

First, it's vastly different from other games I've played. In my experience, I'm much more interested in the skirmish games. 40k is definitely not one of those.

Second, I like when I can look across the table and know exactly what I'm facing. The learning curve for everything I'd be facing in 40k is very, VERY high.

Third, and I know this is really kinda picky, I like knowing who won and lost a game at the end. A number of times I played 40k, by the end of the game, we calculated up our points and ended up in a tie. A tie! I had just spent two hours playing, and ended up with a tie. I don't mind if I lose, and I love to win, but walking away with a tie leaves me feeling like, "Why did I bother?"

Now the odd thing about that, and I admit it makes me a hypocrite, is that I don't mind tying when I play Malifaux. I think it might be because ties are so much more rare in Malifaux and seemed fairly frequent in 40k, but I'm not sure.

In the end, the game was long to set up, long to play, and might not leave me feeling satisfied. I never felt like I really "got it" with the game. In other games, I can pick them up, figure out pretty quickly what I should be worried about, figure out what of my units are designed to do things, etc. but I never got to that point with 40k. That might have to do with the infrequency of playing - I couldn't watch for patterns in how things worked, but whatever the reason, it never really struck me as a game I would enjoy playing much.



Warmachine / Hordes

And finally, the big daddy of them all. Warmachine and Hordes. I'm going to come out and say first that I don't regret any of my time or money in this game. I got a good four years out of playing this game, and loved a lot of it. I met a lot of people through this game, including Dan, and made a lot of friendships. Overall, I call my time with this game a huge success.

So why don't I play it anymore? A lot of it goes back to my reasons for disliking 40k.

They made a new rule set: Mark 2, and already had hundreds of models available. When Mark 2 hit, everything changed. Everything. In order to keep up with the game, I'd have to relearn the entire game.

Not necessarily a bad thing - I could have done it. Mark 2 went a long way to cleaning up some of the problems I had with the game. The rules bloat, etc. But it also made the game size larger. More models were fielded. The game that had started as a skirmish game turned into an army-sized game. I tried a few games of it, but decided it was just too big for me. I know I can play smaller point levels, but it didn't seem like the game was intended for smaller point levels anymore. So I saw Mark 2 as the perfect time to drop the game and look for a new skirmish game to pick up.

Now that I have a new one - Malifaux - I am watching it and noticing that, frankly, it's going to do pretty much the same thing. It's going to get too big with too many models and too much rules bloat, and I'm going to want to drop it. But with luck, I'll get a good four years of fun out of it too, and by the, hopefully there will be a new skirmish game I can get in on the ground floor and ride the beginning of too.