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Hello everyone,

My local gaming club is organizing a malifaux tournament one month from today. I have never played malifaux and after reading a bit about it seems quite a good skirmish game. At the moment I only play 40k and KoW which due to their scale means I never have enough time to paint models or assembly complete armies
For that reason I am looking to get into a game where I only have to paint an handful of minis and it is cheap to start playing.
Malifaux sounds perfect for this and this tournament might be the perfect excuse to pull the trigger.
The rules for the tournament are the following http://www.wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?36556-25ss-Malifaux-Tournament-based-in-Cambridge-Uk-on-Sunday-25th-November-2012

I download the rules and I am giving it a read.
But just for reference how many models would I need on average and how much would I have to spend?
Which rulebook is the one I need? Can I buy one with rules and fluff on the same book?
Are bases included with the models?

You could spend as little as $30 and get a starter box and play with those models. Most are in the 25 SS range.

However, most of the starter boxes are lacking one or two blisters of very complimentary models to a given master, the Viks love Ronin, Ramos wants a Mobile Toolkit and Lilith might want a Young Nephilim.

What I would say is to really go through the fluff section of www.malifaux.com and figure out what Master you like. Then snag the starter box and maybe of the suggested blister. You'll do just fine. Reasonably, you can spend about $50 and be pretty happy with what you have.

Of course, then you'll start expanding from there....

The Rules Manual is what you need to play. There are four main books and they all contain a bunch of stuff, including rules, fluff and model statlines You do get a card with each model so you don't need the big books to know your models' rules.

Yes, bases come with the models.

If you have any questions about Malifaux, there is a beginner's guide to Malifaux located here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/474150.page

A couple notes:

If you're looking to be ready for a tournament in a month, you should probably be working on one of the more straightforward masters, and your choices will be more limited because single master means all-comers. Furthermore, with a small list and no flexibility (not getting other options), you'll need a pretty balanced set of minis.

The above goes against some of the Malifaux play style, but is pretty good for a first tournament.


Probably, with those restrictions, your best choice would be to compile a list of Masters or factions that you'd like to try out, and then there would be a good starting point.

Regarding books, each book (with the exception of the third) has introduced masters with associated pieces and others scattered through the other expansions, so, likely, you'll mostly be able to look at a single book.

Thanks for the help so far guys.

As for the masters I think I have settle in a small group.
I intend to play one of the following:
Lady Justice
Viktorias

This one are the most tempting at the moment. I am also looking to:
Colette Du Bois
Kaeris
Lucius
Sonnia (although I am kind of ignoring her at the moment since seems to be pretty hard to pick up)

Sonnia is pretty easy to pick up, she's very straight forward with her spell casting (things go boom).

Um... As for LJ, I'm going to suggest you look at the following:

Executioner
Scales of justice
Guild Austringers (1 or 2 of them)
Convict Gunslinger

Those models will help augment various aspects of LJ's box.

1) Scales of Justice is her personal totem, and helps use her spells away from her, allowing the scales to move with the Death Marshalls and buff them as LJ goes off and does some great beat-stick stuff

2) Executioner is a way to go if you want MORE melee awesomeness, because well... he's a beast lol. He does attract a lot of attention simply because he's a bigger model, and your average player knows how much he hurts in melee... There is a way to get him across the board, but it requires you to lose some duels against yourself (meaning you might cheat valuable cards to get it off).
SpiralingCadaver, can you still pine box your own models, I can't remember?

3) The last two are ways to get some ranged attacks in your army. the Death Marshals have ranged attacks, but the Convict and Austringers are a way to get longer ranged fighting in your crew.

I don't know the executioner or Scales well, so can't comment on those, but the Gunslinger is one of my favorites, and I hate seeing an Austringer on the other side of the board.

As far as I can tell, yes, the Pine Box trick still works (nothing in the Pine Box rules say otherwise, don't remember the changes to Bury, but I'm pretty sure it still works fine).

The Lady Justice crew is also one I'd highly recommend.

The LJ crew is one of my demo crews... I tend to give it to the new guys because it is very... balanced for new players, which is why I like it. I need to get another one, as my other demo crews are very lopsided (so I tend to play those and cheat down, or make it competitive lol)...

So you always reccomend picking the LJ box anyway rather than just picking models separately?

Yup. The Lady Justice set doesn't have any duds. It's pretty well designed/well-rounded-- generally fast enough that it can take objectives and counter threats, and strong enough to take the melee fight to the enemy, while (esp. with some of Alfndrate's suggestions) enough to hold its own at range.

I probably wouldn't take all 3 Death Marshals, but they come in 3-packs anyways, so it's not like you'd be getting a better deal otherwise.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Yup. The Lady Justice set doesn't have any duds. It's pretty well designed/well-rounded-- generally fast enough that it can take objectives and counter threats, and strong enough to take the melee fight to the enemy, while (esp. with some of Alfndrate's suggestions) enough to hold its own at range.

I probably wouldn't take all 3 Death Marshals, but they come in 3-packs anyways, so it's not like you'd be getting a better deal otherwise.

Shame as I kind of prefer the like of the alternative LJ
So for the tournament what do you guys think would be my priorities? Since it is only a month away I want to start painting as fast as I can.

Something like this?
Guild Crew - 25 - Scrap

Lady Justice -- 7 Pool
Scales of Justice [2ss]

Death Marshal [4ss]
Death Marshal [4ss]
Executioner [7ss]
Guild Austringer [5ss]

From my experience, that would definitely be a solid list to start with.

Yeah, I agree, it is solid, the only thing is that the death marshals are losing their buffing powers simply because you're taking out more of them.... I agree it is still very solid though...

I see that it says Fixed master, but I'm assuming that crews will still be hired before games begin as normal, so might I suggest also painting up Judge as well?

If you're faced with some ressers I personally would rather remove the Austringer for the Judge because none of the death marshals leave corpse tokens, the added benefit of an extra model with Slow to Die and Hard to Wound is great against anyone, but I find it good against ressers simply because it increases the chances of weak damage from your opponent/preventing him from cheating damage flips.

It would make your crew slightly more melee focused, but I think it could work well.. .The crew is fast enough to reach center board pretty quickly...

But yeah, you've got a solid list there man. Best of luck

 Alfndrate wrote:
Yeah, I agree, it is solid, the only thing is that the death marshals are losing their buffing powers simply because you're taking out more of them.... I agree it is still very solid though...

I see that it says Fixed master, but I'm assuming that crews will still be hired before games begin as normal, so might I suggest also painting up Judge as well?

As for the marshals I have no idea what you are talking about lol.
I am actually not sure about that but I believe that is not the case based on this:
Your crew should be an “all comers list”. Each player will pick a single fixed crew which must be used in each round.

And thanks for the support. Just really want to learn it and have fun

Ah, my mistake I missed that last night while reading it... In that case, what you've got is a very solid list. Just be prepared for the Executioner to take a lot of shots...

As to the Death Marshal buffing, they have an ability called Finish the Job that gives you +1 Dg per Rams Head in the casting total (so a minimum of +1 since the Death Marshals have a Ca of 5 Rams). Lady Justice also has an ability called Inspiring Swordplay which gives +2Cb to all friendly models within 10 inches and LoS when she kills something.

So assuming you get 2 Rams heads in your Finish the Job then Lady Justice is doing 7 damage in a single attack. So, LJ spends her (0) action on Swordstyle and takes Fate. This gives her +2Cb, next she spends (2) AP on a Charge, so that's a 8 inch charge with a 2 inch melee reach. Lady Justice then makes the free melee attack from the charge attacking at 9Cb, meaning on average she'll be flipping a 15 or so. Assuming she cheats it with ANY card to get a 6 to 10 difference (allowing no negative twists). From here her Greatsword gives her a positive twist and she gets a positive twist from the charge. This allows her to cheat the damage, and possibly get Severe (if you cheat). In this scenario she's dealing at least 4 damage because of Critical Strike. If you have a ram or two in your total, you're increasing weak damage by 1 for every ram's head in the attack total. This means that if you flip a ram LJ is doing 5 damage on a weak, 8 damage on a severe.

Melee Expert will give you a second attack, and you can basically repeat this. When she kills a model Inspiring Swordplay kicks in and every other friendly model comes in and gets +2 Cb.


Now add an extra 1 or 2 damage if you run a death marshal in before and have him use Finish the Job...


Tips and tricks: http://pullmyfinger.wikispaces.com/Lady+Justice