Welcome to the second in my series of Malifaux Fourth Edition introductory columns.  We have a lot of ground to cover, so I don’t expect this one to be the last.  Previously we discussed a grab bag of changes to terrain, crew composition, and scenario generation.  Today, we’re going to dive into the meatiest changes: those affecting gameplay.

There’s a lot to cover here, so I’ve subdivided this section further.  We’ll be discussing:

• Changes to duels;
• Changes to combat;
• Changes to Conditions and Markers;
• Changes to actions; and
• Miscellaneous changes.

Without further ado… here we go!

Changes to Duels

A duel is a duel is a duel.  We still have simple duels, pitting a model’s stat against a target number (or TN), and opposed duels, pitting a model’s stat (now called Skill, or Skl) against a defender’s stat.  You still flip cards off the top of the deck, and the losing party still gets the first chance to “cheat fate” by using a card from their hand.  There are still red and black jokers and they work much the same way as before.  Depending on the suit of your card, you still resolve a trigger for an additional effect.  And positive and negative “twists” still apply, which cancel out to determine how many cards you flip for your duel.

There are, however, a few differences.  For one thing, you now have a seven-card control hand by default.  For another, you no longer need to be at a “straight flip” (i.e. with no net negative modifiers) to cheat a duel – you can always cheat.  And you can no longer spend Soulstones to add a suit or a positive twist to a duel.  So what can you do instead?

The headlining change is Empowering.  Whenever any of your models makes a duel, you may discard a card with value 1-5 from your hand.  If you do so, that model gains a +twist and the suit of the discarded card to that duel.  This is huge; being able build in triggers on any model, even non-Masters and Henchmen, fundamentally changes how models can be evaluated.  While you will never be guaranteed to have an appropriate card to Empower with, especially with card draw being less prevalent than it was before, there are quite a few abilities that specifically draw weak cards out of your discard pile, giving you lots of fuel to Empower your actions.

There is a new class of trigger, too – Soulstone triggers.  These do not have a suit; you simply spend a Soulstone to activate them.  Again, these triggers can appear on any type of model, not just Masters/Henchmen.  The fact that you can always do them, but you must spend a soulstone, makes them work fundamentally differently from other triggers – as long as you have a stone, your opponent has to respect the possibility of the trigger.

There is one more new mechanic, too.  If you beat the required total for a duel by 5 or more, you get a Raise – that means the TN, for a simple duel, or the opponent’s total, for an opposed duel.  If you beat it by 10, you get two Raises, by 15 you get 3, and so on.  Raises do a variety of things; most commonly, for each Raise you get with a melee or projectile attack (but not a magical attack), you do one additional damage.  Many tactical actions have increased effects from having Raises, such as healing more or affecting more targets.  Oh, and if your card is the Red Joker, you get one additional Raise, on top of all of its other effects.  Flipping the Red can lead to blowouts now if your opponent flips low and can’t cheat.

Changes to Combat

Combat has also changed substantially.  While making an attack flip is the same as it ever was, there are no more damage flips.  Each attack simply has a flat damage value.  Of course, Raises modify this (for non-magical attacks), and many attacks have specific interactions with Raises – for example, having a Raise value of 3 (meaning you get a Raise for every 3 points you exceed the target’s score rather than 5) or doing +2 damage per Raise instead of +1.  Conversely, if the players’ duel totals tie, the attacker deals 1 less damage.

Some types of attacks have vanished, though.  Most notably, Blasts and Shockwaves are gone (there are a couple of attacks that sort of imitate old Shockwaves, but not many).  There are quite a few attacks that pulse out damage from the target to nearby enemies, though (and often the amount of damage pulsed scales with Raises).  And, by default, attack actions can no longer target friendly models – although most of the ones you would want to use on friendly models, such as Lure and Obey, have italicized text that lets you do that.

Engagement still exists, but it is a flat 1″ now, regardless of a model’s melee range.  Being Engaged stops you from doing the same things as in Third Edition (making projectile attacks, charging, interacting), although there is no more Friendly Fire penalty to ranged attacks.  There is no more Disengaging; you can now Walk right out of melee, though doing so cuts your speed in half, and you can’t Interact during that activation (just like how Disengaging used to work).

Defensive triggers are gone, and all defensive tech is separated into three categories: Physical Defense, Magical Defense, and Unusual Defense.  These categories have no rules baggage in and of themselves, but certain attacks, or certain models, ignore certain types of defenses.  In general, defensive tech has been way toned down, with Armor (and many other types of damage reduction) being Once per Activation now.  There are a number of new types of defensive tech, including Terrifying (which now applies a penalty to attackers with Wp below a certain threshold, rather than requiring a test before the attack), and some pieces of tech that specifically interact with Raises – either making them more difficult, reducing damage dealt by Raises, or modifying them in other ways.

Finally, as noted previously, Cover and Concealment now apply to all kinds of attacks, including melee attacks.

Changes to Conditions and Markers

What’s changed with Conditions?  Well, they’re gone, for one thing.  That’s right: the game no longer has Conditions.

In their place, we have Tokens.  Many effects – including everything that used to be a Condition – are represented by Tokens.  There are familiar Tokens, like Burning and Poisoned, as well as new ones like Hastened (the opposite of Staggered), Bolstered (the opposite of Injured) and Adaptable (a one-use effect that lets you add the suit of your choice to a duel).  Many crews also have rare or unique Tokens; as you might expect, Brilliance Tokens are back for the Honeypot crew, while Ophelia can hand out Perforated Tokens.

You can have a maximum of one Token of any type at a time, which means you can no longer stack Poisoned or Burning or Shielded or Focused.  Many effects that used to end a Condition now remove a Token, which means that some things that could not be ended before (such as Brilliance) now can be.  The tradeoff is that they are now easier to apply, of course.  A Master’s Crew Card will include a reference of the Tokens that crew uses (over and above the most basic Tokens that everyone uses, like Focused, Shielded, and Adaptable).

Tokens are a huge change, and hard to process in isolation.  Without knowing how common Token removal is going to be, and how individual crew mechanics interact with their respective Tokens, it is difficult to judge the magnitude of the change.

Markers, similarly, have been slightly streamlined.  They are no longer Destructible, or rather, they are now all Destructible using the Slam action.  In addition, you are hard-capped at 5 copies of the same Marker per crew – if you make a new one, you first have to remove an existing one from play.  Note that this includes Scheme Markers!  Markers can have terrain traits, as before (blocking, concealing, impassable, hazardous) but friendly models may choose to be unaffected by friendly Markers.

Killed models all drop a single 30mm Remains Marker with no traits when they die.  (Except Peons, of course).  Like Tokens, a crew’s Crew Card will list the traits of the Markers they make.

Changes to Actions

Actions are still divided into Attack and Tactical, and there are still General actions every model can take.  These are much the same as they were, although a couple of them have gone: Disengage has retired, as stated above, as has Assist.  Concentrate has changed its name to Prepare, and now gives you a Focused, Adaptable or Shielded Token.  (Focus is now just a +twist to hit, since there are no more damage flips).  Interact now allows you place (or remove) a Scheme Marker within 1″ rather than in base to base contact.  However, any enemy model touching a Scheme Marker now prevents you from removing it via Interaction.

There are still “bonus actions,” although now they are called Signature Actions, and they work a bit differently.  You are not limited to taking one Signature Action per activation; rather, the first time you take a Signature Action, it does not count against your action limit.  Different models may have the same Action, but have it only be Signature for one of them.  And if you have more than one Signature Action, you only get one for free.  This has some interesting implications – for example, Leaping models can now Leap three times if they really want to, while models with a Signature attack may attack three times.  Stunned Tokens, naturally, mean that your Signature Action still counts against your action limit.

Some Actions require a Soulstone even to declare.  Many of these are on Crew Cards, but not all of them.  They are marked with the standard Soulstone diamond icon.

Miscellaneous Changes

That’s the vast majority of the changes, but there are a few random ones here and there.  For example, there are no more Auras – there are just abilities that affect models within a certain range, and do not require Line of Sight unless they say so.

In no particular order:

• Models cannot relent to, and thus fail, their own TN for a tactical action they declare (the so-called “Dabbler Loophole”)
• Actions generated by game effects (such as the Onslaught trigger or Made to Kill) are now “additional actions.”  They still do not count against your action limit, but now they can declare triggers, though they cannot generate additional additional attacks.  So if you have Onslaught and Crit Strike, you can Onslaught, make a second attack, and declare Crit Strike on that attack, but you cannot Onslaught again.  (The one exception to this is the Charge action, which functions the way it should).
• “Another” now always means a model other than the model taking the action.  “Different” means a model other than the target of the action.
• Models resisting opposed duels are always considered to be controlled by their owner, so you cannot cheat defensively for your opponent’s models while Obeying them.
• If a model Replaces into multiple models, they are all considered to have activated if the original model had activated (closing the so-called “Coryphee Duet” loophole).
• You can only be affected by one piece of hazardous terrain per activation.  (I am not sure if I expect this one to last, since it produces some weird effects).

Wrapping Up

That’s a ton of changes.  Pretty hard to digest them all – but you don’t have to take my word for it.  Head over to the Wyrd forums and join the open beta yourself!

Check back when I post my next article to get the lowdown on what’s changing lore-wise, as well as to meet Malifaux’s two newest crews.

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