Malifaux – An Archive For The Steinberg Shed Space Blog

Wolsung, In A More Traditional Setting.

My ‘Old West’ scenery, originally built with Malifaux in mind, was out recently to play phase two of our Wolsung games. Less height and more scattered cover makes any game play differently, but the game was just as quick and bloody if we weren’t too careful.

These boards are porpose built as a 3’x3′ setup and I thought they wouldn’t see too much use after we left Malifaux behind a couple of years ago. Its nice to have a game on that sized table again to get some use out of them. The river board can be swapped out to a grass board for more scenery to be added if needed. Or for larger games it can be a 3’x4.5′ board using all three pieces. The town is half old west store fronts from Sarissa Precision and half 4Ground frontier houses. I just need some higher points to add to the variety. A water tower and gallows would do that quite well I think.

Again the heroes went up and over while the henchmen covered their backs. This was a three hero fight and added an extra couple of chaps to each crew. Even so, this only left me with 6 Triad figures to play a game.

The old colonel was pushed about by the bruiser again and took pot shots at anything he could see.

My close combat hero, Phoenix, was no match for the Ash and Oak’s Heroes this time and they managed to take him out and retreat before I could retaliate in anyway. Strike and fade seems to play as a good tactic for these assassination games.

One of the triad tricks is to place smoke screens (mist clouds) as quick actions from lower grade henchmen. Add in one hero, Mr Cheng, and all these clouds become acidic and harmful…

A good couple of games again and next up we should be trying the new missions. I do need to find something to represent the many mist clouds I seem to be using in most of our games.

Anything For The Empire…

After all that historical stuff we were craving something a little out of the normal. One of my friends has a habit of leading us astray by buying stuff for me to read and thus influencing our gaming habits (sometimes not to subtly).

This time he simply went out and bought 3 copies of Empire of the Dead by West Wind Productions. Its a great, simple and small scale game which we could proxy figures into to start with (my Malifaux crew have been on more EotD missions than anything else).

Empire of the Dead is set in an alternate, gothic Victorian era where a steampunk style of imagery has clearly influenced the world view. A great twist on a game world and one that lends itself well to the stories many gamers would have read as youngsters. A world where vampires and werewolves can be seen side by side with Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. All on a backdrop of high tech steam power and mechanical servants.

A few reinforcements were needed as this is designed to be a campaign game. As members of a gang die or new members are recruited I would find that my Malifaux range would need to be complemented with figures that didn’t look too out of place.

Starting with a Zendarian gentleman’s club I had my leaders and heroes already. I needed basic troopers to represent their footmen and personal guards… West Wind do a range of Victorian Gothic types and they fit well with the Malifaux range too.

To play this game the way it deserves, a new terrain setting was again needed. Some of my buildings would work well but the cramped smokey cities I wanted would need something more. I think my modelling bug truly started here… The table deserved all types of extra touches like the lamp posts and gardens pictured.

This was an endeavour that would go on for some time as one gentleman’s club is never enough for some of us…

To be continued…

What came first?

I’ve been thinking back to what was first seen on the painting table when I got the shed finished and what was played most at that time…

These guys are likely the first to be seen when the grand opening was done…

We had just discovered Malifaux and as usual we all started with a buy in at starter pack level. Not a game we played for long but some great little figures for painting. If I’m honest, they have probably been out more often as an Empire of the Dead Gentleman’s Club crew than anything else.