Well, well, well.  Look what we have here.

Malifaux has Burned, succumbed to Madness, and been left in Ashes.  What’s next?  From these embers arises a new beginning… a new edition.  Malifaux Fourth Edition is almost upon us!

For those of who you have been living in the Quarantine Zone sewers, Wyrd announced Malifaux’s Fourth Edition on April 14.  As of April 21, the Open Beta is, well, open.  We don’t have a firm release date yet, but it is surely imminent… so what is changing?

Almost everything, it turns out.  This is a massive change, probably bigger than any edition change so far.  So much is changing that I won’t be able to cover it all in one article.  This, then, is the first in a series.  I’ll be going over what’s different, what’s the same, and what those changes mean to you, the Malifaux Enjoyer.  I’ll also be spotlighting crews, both new and old, and discussing some of the updates to the lore and world of Malifaux.  This is an exciting time!

Core Rules Changes

So let’s start with the basics.  The core rules have changed significantly, with everything from Conditions to Markers to Soulstones getting a fundamental rework.  I will try to cover as much as I can, broken down by categories.  Before we go any deeper, though, there are a few things that haven’t changed, and probably never will.

You still hire a Master, who has a Keyword, which defines your hiring pool for the game.  You still spend Soulstones to hire a crew, with remaining Soulstones going into a pool for using during the game.  Models still take alternating activations, spending two or three AP on attack and tactical actions. Duels are still resolved by flipping cards from a Fate Deck and cheating from your Control Hand.  And you still complete Schemes and Strategies to score points, often using Scheme Markers dropped by the Interact Action.

Whew!  So what’s different?  Basically everything else.  Let’s dive in.  Note: the game is in beta now, and many things are likely to change; everything in this article is accurate as of time of writing, and if things change I will go back and update the article (but no promises that I’ll catch stuff right away).

Encounter Changes

Encounters work quite a bit differently than they did before.  The four deployment zones are the same, but that’s about it.

First of all, the big one: games are now 4 turns instead of 5.  You can start scoring Schemes and Strategies on Turn 1, rather than having to wait, but you don’t get Turn 1 to prep anymore – you’re diving right in.

Strategies are much the same as they were before, mostly involving placing and then doing things with Strategy markers.  I will do an article later breaking down the new Schemes and Strategies (and I will edit a link into this article when I do that, so check back).  For now, a couple of things to note are that Strategy Markers and Scheme Markers cannot be interacted with if an enemy model is touching them.  You can bodyguard markers by being in base contact.  I will also note that 1) several models have specific rules allowing them to remove or otherwise mess with Strategy markers, and 2) most Strategies have a “catch-up” mechanic whereby the player with fewer points gets to move or remove some markers at the end of the turn.  There are four turns, but you can score five Strategy points over the course of a game, because Strategies have a condition that allows you to score an additional point from them.

Schemes have changed a bit more.  At the start of the game you create a pool with three Schemes instead of five, and each player secretly chooses one.  When you score a Scheme, you reveal it as normal – but Schemes no longer have a reveal condition and an endgame condition.  Instead, they have a reveal condition and a “bonus” condition that is worth an extra point.  For example, when you choose the Assassinate Scheme, you choose an enemy model at full health that is not a Totem or Peon (more on those guys below).  When you knock that model to below half health you reveal the Scheme and score a point.  If it dies this turn, you score an additional point.

At the end of each turn, if you revealed your Scheme, you discard it and choose a new one.  Not just any, Scheme, though – each Scheme has a list of three Schemes it “branches” into.  Thus, if you revealed Assassinate, you can next choose Harness the Ley Line, Runic Binding, or Frame Job.  If you didn’t score your Scheme that turn, you can still reveal it at end of turn and abandon it, getting no points for it but getting to pick a new one from the three follow-up options.

You can score a maximum of 6 Scheme points per game, no matter what, so you don’t need to get the “extra point” every time to max out your score – and, with 5 Strategy points on the board, the total achievable is now 11.  Eleven points in 4 turns is a lot more frantic than 8 points in 5 turns, so it’ll take more effort to cap your score.

There have been a few other tweaks to encounters.  Interact actions now have a range of 1″, and so can place or remove Scheme Markers from farther away than base contact (though remember you cannot remove Scheme Markers that are being touched by an enemy model).  And now it’s the defender that divides their crew and deploys half of it first, rather than the attacker.

And finally, initaitive and pass tokens – the scourge of my existence in Third Edition – are gone.  Now, the attacker has initiative on Turn 1, and thereafter the player who did not get last activation on the previous turn has initiative. if it is your turn to activate a model and you have equal to or fewer than the number of unactivated models as your opponent, you may choose to pass.  This has complicated implications for determining who gets the last activation, which we will return to in a later article.

Crew Changes

Hiring crews still starts with picking a Master and getting a Totem for free.  You can still hire any model that shares a keyword with your Master.  But there are a few new limits.

First of all, out-of-keyword hiring has been restricted. You can hire a maximum of two non-Versatile out-of-keyword models.  Doing so incurs a 1-Soulstone tax on the model’s cost, as before.  Versatile also works as it did before.  Second, while leftover Soulstones after hiring still go into a Soulstone pool, that pool is now capped at 6 instead of 10 at time of hiring.  However, you can go above 6 during the course of the game.  And you might – now, in addition to effects that just generate a Soulstone, whenever a model you control dies, you gain a Soulstone.  This does not count Summoned models or Peons, but any other model who dies increases your cache.

That’s the second time, I’ve mentioned Peons – what are they?  Good question.  Station has been a bit simplified in this edition; there are Masters, who have pretty much the same qualities as they did before (although immunity to control effects like Obey is now a trait of Masters rather than text built into the effects themselves), Totems (who come with Masters), Henchmen, Minions, and Peons. Peons are the lowest of the low; they have a permanent action limit of 1 AP, they can neither engage nor be engaged, enemy models can move through them, and they are all effectively Insignificant (cannot interact, ignored for Strategies and Schemes, do not stop enemies from interacting with Markers that they’re touching).  They do not give you a Soulstone when they die and do not leave markers behind when they die.  There aren’t many Peons in the game, and it’s what you’d expect: Malifaux Rats, Mindless Zombies, that kind of thing.

Finally, all dual faction masters have been forced to pick a side.  Sad in some cases – I will miss Zipp – but thematic, for an edition launched with Where Will You Stand? as a tagline.  Some few models still retain two keywords, allowing them to be hired cross-faction, but they’re the decided minority now – most dual-keyword models have picked one side and are staying with it.

That’s it for limits.  But there are some new elements added to hiring, too.  The first and most consequential is Crew Cards.  Previewed in Third Edition with the Configuration, Crew Cards are an “upgrade” you get for hiring your Master.  Each Crew Card modifies your entire crew in a variety of ways – giving them new actions, new triggers, new passive abilities, and so on.  Each Title has its own Crew Card, and so that means the models in the keyword may function entirely differently depending on which version of their Master you hired.  Some of these Crew Cards are pretty wild – for example, Nellie’s Crew Card has a “power bar” that fills based on actions her Crew takes, and gives bonuses when it’s full (as well as allowing you to spend it down for effects).

Titles also have different totems now, too.  In most cases, the existing Totem remains the Totem for the “base” version of the Master, and the Title’s Totem is a model that used to have its own existence – for example, Tara, Timeless has the Scion of the Void as her Totem, while Wong the Enchanter has three Flying Piglets as his Totems.

As for the rest, Minions can still appear in multiples, as before.  Henchman no longer “use Soulstones” as a basic trait; the use of Soulstones is radically different than it was before, and everyone has equal access to them.  Rather, what makes Henchmen special is their ability to assume command.  Once per game, if your Master is dead, you can spend a Soulstone at the start of the turn to give one Henchman of your choice an action limit of 3 instead of 2 for the rest of the game, effectively making them the new Master.  

Finally, as hinted above, Summons are still in the game, but with some changes.  First of all, the TN for summoning a model is no longer keyed to its points cost; instead, models that can be summoned have a special “summon TN” stat that tells you how hard they are to summon.  By default, Summoned models are placed in base contact with the summoner, though most summon abilities tell you where they pop up.  As was the case in 3E, models being controlled by the enemy crew can’t summon, although this is now baked into the core rules rather than added as a rider to every Obey-style ability.

Summoned models always come into play with a Summon Token, which can never be removed, and a Slow Token, which is removed in the ordinary way (Slow works the same way it does now, notwithstanding being a “Token” instead of a condition – more on Tokens in a later article).  Summoned models can never Interact and do not give you a Soulstone when they die, a bit like Peons.

Terrain Changes

The terrain/line of sight rules have also changed quite a bit, with a goal of making terrain a lot more dynamic than it was before.  I’m not going to go into detail on all of these changes, since many of them are not so much “changes” as “reimagining how models interact with terrain,” but here’s a high level overview:

• Terrain can still grant Concealment or Cover.  If you are drawing line of sight through less than 1″ of Concealing terrain you still ignore it.
• Dense terrain is the same as it ever was – you can see in, out, but not through.
• If a target has Concealment, you are a negative flip on all attacks against it.  Melee attacks too (though this will only be relevant for melee attacks with more than 1″ of range).
• If the target has Cover, all of your attacks will deal 1 less damage to it.
• Line of Sight is calculated the same as it used to, but there’s no Shadow anymore.  If you are within 2″ of a piece of terrain equal to or larger than you, you can hide behind it even if the attacker is bigger than the terrain.
• Friendly models no longer block line of sight.

Terrain with height is a bit more interesting, as the rules now encourage more pieces of climbable terrain.  You can still walk “up” climbable terrain and keep moving, but if you end a Walk in base contact with a piece of such terrain, you can scale it up or down instantly.  You can also jump across terrain as long as the terrain you are jumping to is at your height or, at most, 1″ shorter, and as long as you have enough movement to scale the gap (and there’s nothing blocking the gap, like a Sz 3 model standing in between two Sz 2 boxes).  You can still fall if 50% or more of your base is unsupported, but it just deals 1 Irreducible damage if you fall 2″ or more.  Taking falling damage ends your movement.

If you are attacking up at someone, and the difference in elevation between you and the target is 2 or more, they have Cover.

Wrapping Up

Whew!  That’s a lot and we’ve barely scratched the surface.  I’ll be following up for an article on gameplay changes, which are significant enough that they deserve their own piece.  I’ll also be writing a piece about the lore changes, including the two brand new Crews this edition, as well as a piece on the new Strategies and Schemes, and I’ll be updating all of this work as Wyrd releases more and more… so stay tuned!

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.