I’ve wanted to get into Malifaux for some time and now it seems to be gathering attention around here. That was the perfect excuse to get my hands onto their Starter Set.
This is not an unboxing of the box, as it has some time now and there are plenty of unboxings online. Just a quick recap of what you get: everything you need to start playing!
You get 8 miniatures (4 Guild, 4 Neverborn) that have the Mercenary keyword. Which means that you’ll be able to use them with any faction of the game. Really nice for a starter set.
Then you get a couple of fate decks (the dice of this game) and two measuring tapes. You could use regular poker cards and measuring tapes are easy to get, but including these completes the package. Also, the fate decks have the custom suits, which makes it easier and they tell you which kind of damage they do for example (moderate, for example) on the card themselves which for new players is really helpful. The measuring tapes are really compact and not made of metal as the regular ones are. Which is nicer to use around the miniatures.
Lastly, it comes with a small booklet with scenarios that slowly introduce you the game mechanics. And once you’re with it, the Starter Set also gives you access to a digital download of the full rules of the game, no fluff.
It’s a really neat package if you want to start playing Malifaux. But it does nothing to introduce you to the world of Malifaux. That’s to me its main problem. What hooks me is a solid ruleset and an engaging narrative. Malifaux might have both of those, but they’re only showing you the first one.
Anyway, on to the miniatures. Malifaux’s miniatures are infamous for being too fiddly to build, although beautiful and very dynamic. With the Starter Set Wyrd wanted to do some easier to build miniatures, which resulted also in some of their more static poses.
Even so, you’ll need to take your time to build them as they have some really delicate bits. And the Nephilim for example have really small contact areas on their fee to glue them to the bases. So small in fact that I didn’t even try to pin them.
Once built they do look nice, though. And they’ve done some clever things with the pieces to hide some of them while building. You might need to do some minor gap filling (like with, once again, the Nephilim).
As I tend to do, I made some bases using one of the Basius 2 pads I have and them added some Vallejo Texture to blend/hide the minor imperfections.
Now let’s put some paint on those minis!
