Can You Beat This?

 

A guide to starting competitive fourth edition

I'm Maniacal Cackle, and this is my first blog on 'Faux Worries! My bizarre claim to fame is in the three world championships I have participated in for Malifaux, I have been knocked out by the person who won the championship in all of them. For a while I was on the Malifaux World Series committee but now mostly just participate as a competitively-focused community member.

With Fourth Edition beta wrapped up and launch events happening around the globe, I wanted to cover some competitive considerations for people wanting to hit tournaments at full speed.

Nobody has any idea of what the best gameplan in Malifaux looks like yet. That’s the joy of a new edition - the absolute strongest thing you can do is find your own gameplan that no one is expecting and has no counter to. But not all gameplans are created equal.  Here I will write some base level gameplans to consider. If your gameplan can’t stand up to some of the plans listed here, you may want to work on polishing your plans a bit here.

Here we'll look at pass control and some brief insights into the four strategies we'll be starting the edition with.

Pass control

One of the competitive considerations that a lot of people missed in the beta is pass control. Here’s how it works.

The player who has less remaining activations has pass control. This means that they can always prevent their opponent from passing (by never passing when their opponent has equal models), until the very end of the turn at which point they can decide who goes last (and by extension who goes first).

Therefore, anyone playing the larger crew needs to ask “does my gameplan beat having control over who goes first or last?” And yes!  There are many crews that do. But make sure you’re asking yourself this question when putting together your plan - it will likely be a baseline consideration for all competitive play this edition.

It is also important to note that pass control is fairly binary - either you have it or you don't. So often if a player is giving up on pass control, they are free to build as large a horde as they like. There's no difference between being one model over your opponent or ten in terms of losing pass control.

Plant Explosives

Count to seven - are you placing and/or removing 7 guarded explosive markers on turn 1? Ideally having four guarded and removing three enemy markers, followed up by a suite of beaters to really control the mid game.

To me this is the baseline plan in Plant.  There are two baseline models that make up this plan:

• Base 3 beaters with a signature to move (so they can drop an explosive turn 1 and then fight the rest of the game).
• Models with Don’t Mind Me and a signature to move (so they can gobble up markers turn 1 and then run away turn 2).

When making a Plant gameplan, you’ll want to consider if your overall gameplan can keep up with the competitive standard above and if the individual models you’re hiring hold up to the baseline above.

Informants

Focus on killing early and score turns 2, 3, and 4 while preventing your opponent scoring on turn 4.  Ideally also get the catchup mechanic on the strategy if your opponent really focuses on scoring rather than fighting you.

Can you beat that gameplan?  Informants is a strategy that is basically won on the last turn as it is worth double points, so in a typical game whoever wins the strategy on turn 4 is likely to win if they’ve done a good job with the rest of the game.

The baseline crew here is an attrition crew with good healing + killing power. 

Crews that can shove enemies off markers for a single turn are nice, but you have to ask if they have anything special that is making them keep up with the baseline gameplan above.

Recover Evidence

Dance away from the opponent, score 6 points on schemes, and kill them when they get too close to you.  Ideally with kidnaps.

There are many ways to approach Recover Evidence, but this is the gameplan I think people will be caught out by the most.  If you don’t include a gameplan for how you’re going to deal with a cagey opponent, you’ll likely struggle on this strategy.  If you don’t include a gameplan for how you’re going to score 6 on the schemes, you may face a game where you just lose on scheme points to an opponent that runs away. But if you also do not prepare for what happens when a fight breaks out, you’re likely to lose here.

Again, baseline models should be base 3 beaters with signatures to move. If those aren’t the models you’re taking, make sure you have a good understanding of why the models you're hiring are better than the base gameplan above.

Border Dispute

This one is quite complex, but for a baseline gameplan, consider the opponent who just fills their crew with base 3 beaters with sigs to move.  They can rush the strategy as hard as most schemers, but also can pin markers in place as well as kill everything that is trying to score.

There are many models that merit taking here (Don’t Turn Your Back and Don’t Mind Me both have powerful applications in this strategy), but for each model and gameplan consider how they compare to the baseline above.

Happy brewing!

The above just creates some bare minimum baselines for you to consider. There are going to be some absolutely wild shenanigans this edition I hope, and none of us know what the busted things are yet. But if the thing you’re trying to break isn’t stronger than the baselines I’ve listed above, it is probably a good idea to keep tinkering.

Good luck and enjoy the start of the edition! There’s no other time like it.