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Hi, I would like some help starting Malifaux. I’m an expat living in a country with a virtually non-existent war gaming community, so I’m not looking to play in any tournaments. What I want is to buy two crews so I can teach the game to friends and can play for fun. I have read that when starting you should choose the ones that you like the look of, so I was thinking about buying the Marcus Claw and Fang box set and the Sonnia Criid The Torch and the Blade box set. My question is will these two box sets work well together to play with? To clarify I don’t want two very similar crews, so it’s just replication like (sorry for the 40k analogy) a squad of space marines vs a squad of space marines, and I don’t want one that is a lot better than the other. I ask this as I read things like this:
“Sonnia is the Guild's specialist in hunting down Arcanists, and she does indeed have many ways to hurt spellcasters.” Pull my finger
“Sonnia Criid - The Pyrokinetic Witch Hunter. The Anti-Arcanist,” Dakka Forum
Forgive my ignorance, but it sounds like that Sonnia Criid will be a lot stronger than Marcus and I don’t want to buy two sets with a huge imbalance in them.
I am buying the rule book at the same time, so I don’t really understand what some of the websites are talking about when they are evaluating the characters.
Basically I just want to buy two sets that will create fun even games. As I have to import things I’m not looking to buy any more figures or build crews from scratch, just the Malifaux 2.0 crew box sets. If these two will not work well together, can anyone suggest two that will? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

There's no real imbalance in Malifaux, so even though Criid had some tricks against Arcanists (she has some neat anti-caster stuff if I recall) that's not making her an auto-win. I can say she has a fun crew to play, Hopkins is awesome in both model and shooting ability, and the Witchlings are cool too, and be surprisingly nasty little blighters if they get into combat.

Can't really comment on Marcus's crew as I've never really looked at them, but a quick look reveals it can do a 34-42 Soulstone range dependant on upgrades, and Sonnia does 27-38 SS, so while you might have to take less upgrades on Marcus, there is scope to play the same points value for both. I've found that a few SS difference isn't really am issue when starting out anyway.

Check here for loads of Malifaux info:
http://gmortschaotica.blogspot.co.uk/p/unboxing-malifaux.html

Welcome to Dakka as well!

Thanks very much for the advice! I will get on and buy the box sets and rules now.