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I've been looking at Malifaux off-and-on for several months now, but I think Christmas is an excellent excuse to buy myself some miniatures and tell my wife they're from her. The models are freaking FANTASTIC, and the gameplay seems like it'd be great for someone who prefers objective play over deathmatch.

Unfortunately, I'm hitting a mental brick wall when it comes to understanding how the various factions/masters I'm interested in will play. I want to buy two or three starters/small lists so I can demo the game to friends, so I want to make sure I buy masters I won't mind playing and painting. I'm a hands-on learner, so the theory of "Resurrectionists like bringing things back from the dead" doesn't mesh with how I figure things out.

I know it's annoying, especially since the wiki has such nice writeups, but I was hoping you guys could give me a brief rundown on how a few masters would play on the table. If it helps with quick comparisons, I'm familiar with Warmachine, 40k, Magic the Gathering, and World of Warcraft. Otherwise I'm happy with a sentence or two about what a typical game looks like for them.

-Seamus. I'm probably guaranteed to buy him simply for his model.
-Lady Justice.
-Viktorias
-Ortega
-Hamelin
-Somer Teeth Jones
-The Dreamer


Thanks so much for any help you guys can give!

Gonna pimp the intro thread, as some of your questions are answered in there: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/474150.page

Seamus: Uses his undead hookers to lure your enemies' models away from his edge of the board, and towards you guys. You lure them in, and then Seamus tends to go in for the kill. Lots of lures can really mess up your opponent's game by pulling things out of position, using it to bring things out of LoS, etc...

Viktorias: The sisters are both decent in combat (though one is slightly better than the other). They like to buff each other, as well as use Sisters in Spirit and switch places with each other, or bring the other one closer to her. They also like having Ronins in their forces so that if 1 viktoria dies, you can always turn a Ronin into a new viktoria.

Perdita: She is the anti-neverborn master for the guild. Her and her family are good at shooting, and good at putting down the neverborn. She's quick and likes to be around several of her family members as they can all activate at once, giving you a bit of an advantage as you get around the you go I go activation system.

Hamelin: Kinda broken though I've never seen him played as such, but he uses blight counters to slowly kill your opponents off. Careful as there are 2 versions of Hamelin, the minion (Hamelin, Ratcatcher) and the master (Hamelin, the Plagued). They are the same guy, and cannot be on the board at the same time (i.e. you can't take both of them in your crew). Think of his minion form and his master form like a regular caster and an epic caster in WM (though minions can't lead crews)

Somer: He has two very distinct ways to play. 1 is the gremlin gunline, where you just get a bunch of Bayou gremlins and go to towns. You can heal them and blow them up if you need to as well as using his Git Yer Bro to summon more gremlins.

The other way you can play him is using tons of pigs, piglets, pigapaults, etc... It all depends on what you want to do, just remember if you take his totem, take 2 of them.

The dreamer has one basic strategy which is the Nightmare Bomb. This involves starting the dreamer on the board with nothing else deployed on the board. Then you use his flight ability to move 14 or more inches across the board (he has three general AP to use a turn as well as instinctual which grants a second (0) action). Then you either let him die or you harass your opponent. When the Dreamer dies, ALL buried nightmares come into play. This means LCB and any other nightmare in your list pop up within 6 inches of where he died. So you could theoretically have a 1 melee attack if your opponent kills the Dreamer fast (he only has Df 2 and 3 wounds).


Hope that helps

Well I'm quite embarrassed. I saw the first post and thought it was just a list of links (which is what most "newbie guides" seem to consist of). I didn't realize you answered, well... every possible question I might have! Looks like I have some reading to do - thanks Alfndrate!

it's cool, tell me if any image links are broken would you?

I can't view it while at work since all the images are workblocked

I can add a little bit onto what Alfndrate said.

Hamelin - Hamelins master version is primarily a swarm master playstyle. This plays out a bit differently within Malifaux, as its still a skirmish game so that "swarm" ends up working along a single activation with lots of models. Hamelin has a very limited set of models he can take, and he primarily ends up with children and rats. The Rats are the swarm portion of the crew, and they activate together in a group when its their turn to go. They do a small bit of damage on their own, but very much act like a swarm overrunning thier target. In addition, Hamelin and other models in his crew create a situation where when models die (friendly or enemy) they spawn additional rats.

Currently Hamelin can be a bit tedious to play and is a fairly unpopular master (both to play and face). The developers at Wyrd are currently review and working on a "fix" for him to adjust his playstyle to be "better". There is not an ETA for when they will complete this review and change, but its something that the community is greatly anticipating.

Dreamer - Alfndrate gave a very good review of how Dreamer plays. Dreamer does have a fairly limited set of models that synergise well with his crew, although he can hire any Neverborn models. He really wants Nightmares to get the best use of his abilities, and there are a limited set of Nightmares. From that set, most tend to be fairly elite and costly models (7 - 9 points) with a couple extra's to fill in the gaps (Night Terrors and Alps @ 3 points). Dreamer can provide a very "fast" crew as he can place his crew where he wants to engage. He is also very melee centric, with Lord Chompy Bits as one of the bigger hitters in his crew. He can be a bit complicated to get the hang of, but once you do Dreamer is a lot of fun to play.

Lady Justice - Lady Justice is a fairly versatile Guild master. She is a very heavy melee centric model, who hits very hard but can be a bit of a glass cannon (low defense). One of the strengths the Guild has is they are fairly interchangeable across the faction. Lady Justice is not tied very tightly to what she synergies with in a guild crew, so the crew itself can switch from a ranged to a melee crew fairly easily. One of the challenges Guild has is there are very few high movement models in the crew. Guild dishes out damage but can be challenged in the movement game. Justice's starter box has Death Marshals which are very resilient ranged specialists and the Judge, who is a mix of range and melee, and a solid lieutenant model for Justice. Lady Justice is also the Guild's anti-Resurrectionist leader, so has a number of abilities that work well vs undead.

Sorry for missing Lady J >_<

And it's always good to get Nix's advice and input. I met him at GenCon, and he's got a vast knowledge of Malifaux and you should check out his podcast.