Hi all,

I want to tell you a little bit about the brand new campaign system for Malifaux! This will be available in the new Shifting Loyalties Malifaux book, out at Gen Con 2015.

As someone who grew up on Mordheim and Necromunda, I was very excited to be able to add such a system to Malifaux. To those of you not familiar with those games, a Campaign allows you to track the progression of your models from game to game as they learn new skills, find equipment, and even suffer injuries. This enhances the thematic experience and gives you stories to tell about your games. After all, who could forget that time your Ice Golem found a jetpack?

While Campaigns are great for allowing your games to tell a story, keeping them balanced is the hard part. I primarily attempted to achieve this in three ways:

First, game size is always determined by the smaller Crew. This prevents one Crew from completely outnumbering the other on the board. However, having a larger Crew will still give you an advantage as you get more options going into the game, you can avoid using injured models, and you can afford to suffer some losses. You just won’t completely outpace your opponent for the game.

Second, at the start of each game both Crews generate a “Crew Rating” based on the number of advancement Upgrades and Injury Upgrades they have gained or suffered during the Campaign. The Crew with the lower rating will gain bonus Soulstones to their pool (Soulstones are an in-game resource that can be spent for various effects, this gives the lower rated Crew a way to keep up during the game, rather than just being compensated later) as well as bonus Scrip after the game which can be spent on new models or gear to help them catch up!

Finally, models are only permanently removed from a Crew if they suffer an Injury while they are at their maximum number of Injuries. For example, a Master (the Crew’s Leader) has a maximum of three Injuries, so they are only permanently killed after suffering a fourth Injury. Of course, even with three Injuries they still flip on the Injury chart and there are some ways to survive (such as the always lucky Red Joker) so there is still a tense moment after the game no matter what. By only permanently removing models that have suffered a certain number of Injuries (with the exception of a result of the infamous Black Joker), rather than simply making permanently killed a result on the Injury chart, we prevent Crews from being completely crippled after just a few Injuries (which I have seen happen in many systems). In fact, let’s have a look at the Injury chart:

Of course, not everything that happens to your Crew is bad! There are tons of exciting elements to the Campaign: weekly events that range from everything from wandering mercenaries to carnivorous plants, bounties which your Crew can complete to gain exciting and legendary weapons or skills, the much anticipated Avatars for Masters, optional rules that allow for everything from questionable surgical practices to allowing your Crew to build a hide out that can affect the game, and much more! Let’s have a look at one of the more rare and interesting new weapons:

After every Campaign game you get to flip to see what new equipment you’ll have access to and what injuries your less fortunate models may suffer. And, in true Malifaux fashion, this flip can be Cheated (a card can be played from your hand to replace it) giving you a level of control over the fate of your crew.

If you have loved Campaign systems in other games, love Malifaux, or if you’re just looking for an interesting new narrative experience for your miniatures games, the new Malifaux campaign system found in the Shifting Loyalties book (out at Gen Con) may be the thing for you!

-Justin Gibbs, lead Malifaux designer