Malifaux: Index of the Untold

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Waldo’s Weekly – Index of the Untold

Things have been a bit… active around the office lately, and as usual, Waldo has been right in the middle of it. Notes have been appearing out of nowhere, models have been mixing with Keywords they definitely shouldn’t be, and at least one presentation made perfect sense only if you started from the end.

If you were at AdeptiCon, or happened to catch the right corners of the internet, you may have already heard a few rumors about what’s coming next for Malifaux. At this point, it feels like we should probably stop calling them rumors.

Some of you may have already heard rumors about the announcements made at Adepticon. If you want, you can watch the entire talk here. Or just peruse the slideshow here.

However, this week we want to confirm that the rumors are true. Campaign rules and cooperative mode are coming to Malifaux Fourth Edition, and soon! These new play modes will be introduced in the next Malifaux book, Index of the Untold. This book will be released sometime this summer (assuming that our sacrifices have suitably appeased Meridion and the Fates of International Shipping).

Campaign mode is a way for you to advance your crew from game to game. You start off by choosing two keywords to combine, regardless of faction. This allows for a high degree of creativity. You can do anything from combining Urami and Fae for a haunted forest theme, to combining Red Library and Chimera just so you can take all the monkey models in the game. Next, you create your own master. You do this by picking one of five archetypes and then filling in actions and abilities on your Master from your chosen keywords. You even build your own crew card, choosing from a plethora of starting keyword abilities in the first week and then slowly building on them as your crew grows.

After each game you will go through the Aftermath Phase. In this phase you will find and buy new equipment that can be used by any model, advance your leader with experience, and determine which of the killed models receive injuries. There are loads of interesting pieces of equipment from the standard weapons to the Strange Portal that, when used incorrectly, can transport your model into your next game. Injuries range from the devastating to the merely embarrassing, like the Blackmail result that can be removed from your model by your opponent to force it to take an action. Add in an Aftermath Hand to cheat the results (because what is Malifaux without cheating), a Back-Alley Doctor, ancient named weapons and much more, and you and your group will still be coming up with new ways to play campaign games years from now.

And the campaign is just half the content in Index of the Untold! This book also introduces cooperative mode to the world of Malifaux. In this game mode, you and your friends work together against the game itself and its Non-Player (NP) models. This mode focuses on narrative, puzzle-solving, and working together to bring the fun to the table. The game size is smaller than a normal game of Malifaux, forcing players to utilize limited resources and think outside the box to beat the game. Additionally, it has a much shorter playtime (on average) than a normal game of Malifaux, allowing you to knock out a game in an hour once you have learned the system.

Each NP model has its own stat card which dictates its target priority and what it can do on its turn. Players flip cards to determine which set of actions the NP models take and then follow the instructions on their card. You can use any models in your collection to represent these enemies, allowing you to tailor your experience. Want to do a raid on the Witch Hunters? Use Witchlings as Scrappers and Thalarian Quellers as Magewrights. Want to run a game against the Cult of December? Use Ice Gamin as Scrappers and Silent Ones as Magewrights. This allows you to both make use of models in your own collection and tell your own story.

Of course, there is a lot more to cooperative mode than just enemies. There are thirteen brand new, detailed cooperative encounters for you to play through. Each encounter is broken into two parts, allowing for an element of surprise if you don’t read ahead. Don’t worry, there is plenty of replayability, especially with Challenge Mode, which allows you to increase a scenario’s difficulty. You can even combine campaign and cooperative mode by playing the encounters in order and following the instructions in the campaign section at the end of each one! Oh, and if you want to play solo, go for it. Cooperative mode works perfectly well as a solo game.

Whether you want to pull off a train heist or escape a collapsing mine, Malifaux cooperative mode has what you’re looking for, and the campaign rules allow you to build your own models and advance your crew as you do. Along with the book, we will also release a deck of cards that includes equipment, injuries, and the cards needed for cooperative mode.

Ultimately, this book is both a permission slip and a toolbox. We want to see what amazing things the community will come up with based on it, whether they’re new encounters, game modes, or things we can’t even yet imagine. The sandbox is open. Build something.

We’ve been playing around with this internally for a while now, and seeing it finally come together has been a blast. Between campaign progression, cooperative play, and everything packed into Index of the Untold, there’s a lot here to look forward to.

We’re not too far off from getting this into your hands, and we’re excited to see what comes out of it once you do. Strange combinations, brutal scenarios, ridiculous stories, all of it.

Until next time, we’ve got a few more “totally under control” projects to keep an eye on.

Quelle: Wyrd Games