So had first go of M3E open beta last night, it was Bayou (Wong) vs Ressers (Seamus).
The good news is this is still very much Malifaux.
Everything is all very familiar which is great as you all know I have always loved me some faux.
The tweaks to the ruleset are welcome, such as max 6 card hand will mean you can’t have a quarter of a deck in your hand. This is going to ensure the resource management part of the game is exactly that rather than a hording mechanism.
Now card draw is still a very powerful ability but it’s power is mid-turn when your control hand is depleted rather than the start to ensure you have cards.
The addition markers/conditions that have been added I am also a fan of, the extra effects floating round mean that hopefully we see more conciseness (its a word.. ) as every faction won’t need 3 different named effects that do the same thing.
What will take some getting use to is what they do and remembering that 🙂
This then apparently opens the door for more themed mechanisms for keyword crews, example being Wong and his crew handing out all the glowy. Which is a nice extra mechanic. I have concerns that if every crew has a named marker/condition it is going to get confusing but hopefully it won’t be too bad as it is based on crew keyword. So more linking of crew X with Condition/Marker X than just to a faction.
The tweaks to schemes and strats is interesting with schemes being 2 VP max. Score once during the game and once at the end.
So I think some still need tweaking as detonate charges needs 2 markers within 2″ of an enemy. This is harder to do than you think when the 4″ rule between scheme markers is still there.
Something I will say is if you are coming back as a haggered Old Fauxer (totally hashtagging that), relearning the game.
Start with an unknown master first, as familiarity will cause more confusion as nothing plays exactly the same anymore. the flavour might be the same but the recipe and how to get there will be different. Took us about 3 hours to get through 3 rounds, with much wait he does what now?!
Looking forward to more faux again now though.
P.S. One gripe is we know the cards are going portrait, however at the moment they are still landscape in the beta and its just a little difficult to deal with (but that is the one issue I have at the moment)
