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Inspired on two counts. 1. The Clipsystem Terrain, and 2. Me moving into a small flat soon.

The terrain looks the part (important in my opinion for skirmishy stuff) and the scale will suit my available space. What I don't know is a great deal about the actual gameplay. Models fair tickle my fancy (I do like Victoriana, if not so much steampunk) and I reckon I could persuade a few friends to grab a gang.

I see it's done with cards, rather than dice. This is a new concept to me, and possibly a deal breaker. Essentially, do you ever find yourself with a totally duff hand, and thus lose out due to horrific bad luck, or is there no such thing, and instead just hands, and good hands?

Let me know what you guys think.

In a sense, you never have to even use the cards in your hand at all. Your cards in hand are used to augment the "bad" flips that occur.

Just about every "roll" you would do in another game (attack, casting, saving, etc), you instead flip the top card of your deck in Malifaux. The number flipped is the number you "rolled".

The purpose of the cards in hand is that, if you're unsatisfied with the card you just flipped, you can instead play a card from your hand and that's your flip. You essentially have a collection of "saved" die rolls in your hand.

You can discard anything and draw up your your hand size at the beginning of every round.

The game gets really complicated when special abilities trigger depending on the suit of a flipped card.

Can get very complicated very fast with many different abilities.

Your hand is used to "Cheat fate" and replace a bad card that has been drawn. However you cannot always do this.

My first game was ruined for me as I drew the black joker which cannot be cheated and is an automatic failure / do zero damage. However the red joker is an automatic pass / max damage. - Sorry for the mix up, it was about a year ago. Thanks to skrulnik for the correction.

Overall feelings:
It's a nicely done skirmish game with well supported rules.
I personally don't like the card system but I suppose I would eventually get used to it.
Cheaper than GW by far.
Would be willing to play again but would not be a suitable substitute for WH / WH40k.

With regards to price, I'm also looking at jizzing £1,000+ on a Blood Angels Company, so not too fussed in that respect.

How well does it scale? I see from the website it mentions skirmish and brawl, but where do you find it caps out and becomes clunky?

I don't think it would scale up too well. It follows a skirmish turn system. "I move model X" "you move model Y" "I move model Z" ect.
It is a more balanced system but I feel it would get bogged down in larger games because by the end of the turn you may have forgotten exactly which models did what.

Skirmish & Brawl work fine though, I have played 2 games of both.

Cool cool.

Also, how about the synergy between individuals, or do you find it's more getting the right invidividual on the right enemy, and hoping the cards go well/getting cunning?

Liking what I hear so far.

Synergy is absolutely key.

I ran seamus & Nicodermus, both ressurectionists.

Seamus grants bonuses to "belles" which are more or less prostitutes he killed & reanimated. Nicodermus is used in a support role. Generating corpse counters that seamus can use to resurrect more belles. From what I have seen synergy is king.

Shas'O Dorian wrote:My first game was ruined for me as I drew the red joker which cannot be cheated and is an automatic failure / do zero damage. However the black joker is an automatic pass / max damage.

You have it flipped. Red=Good, Black=Bad.

Its a nice skirmish game.
Flipping cards in place of dice. Do yourself the favor of getting a Malifaux fate deck,
because translating the icons on the stat cards to what cards you have played gets tiresome.
As such, if you have the hard counter for your opponents force, like Jady Justice vs Seamus, then you have an easier time.

I think it plays well among friends, I haven't experienced tournament style.
Mostly we have just played "out of the box" games with maybe one extra model.
I think around 30-35 Soulstones( Malifaux's point method, and magic system).

I've played two games so far and got destroyed both times, but absolutely love the game. I like skirmish games, I just don't like Warmahordes but Malifaux hit the spot for me. THe fact that you can "cheat fate" using your hand of cards gives me more control over who lives and dies and adds so much depth of strategy to the game. Just finished painting up Perdita's crew and looking to get some more games in!

I like the sound of the card system, very innovative. However, while well sculpted I dont care for the aesthetic of the minis at all. Im just not into the victorian steampunk horror thing.

Anyplace i can get a look at the rules for free? Id like to see how hard it would be to use the system for a different setting.

Been playing more and absolutely love it. A few of my friends do to. Got 3 of them to buy "Gangs" after just 1 intro game.

http://www.wyrd-games.net/forum/index.php


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Further, why not go along to a demo at your LFGS? Its the only way to see and feel it.