Cheating Fate in 2025 and Beyond

Malifaux Fourth Edition is being released this summer at Gen Con, and, of course, that means a brand new core rulebook. This book is designed with an emphasis on teaching new players the game from scratch. Malifaux, like most miniature games, can have dense rules, and we have gone out of our way to make this book as conversational and easy to understand as possible, especially for completely new players. For more technical questions, players will be directed to the comprehensive rules on our site, allowing our more engaged players to resolve any issues while letting the core rulebook be the teaching tool it needs to be. Here, we will go over just a few of the ways that these new rules make Fourth Edition the best edition of Malifaux to date! 

In line with this new-player-friendly philosophy, we have made major efforts to make Malifaux Fourth Edition as easy to get into as possible. A common complaint about Third Edition was the playtime; some games took as long as four hours. The playtime for Fourth Edition has been reduced to just under two hours, which is significantly more manageable for casual players. We accomplished this by streamlining rules and reducing the amount of text on cards. This combination has led to a game that is still deep and strategic, but significantly easier to grasp and play in a single evening. 

Another update in Fourth Edition is to the scheme system. Malifaux is well known for its hidden objectives, called schemes, which encourage bluffing and diverse play. In Third Edition, each player selects two schemes at the start of the game, which last through the entire game. In Fourth Edition, however, each player selects one scheme at the start of the game, and each scheme has a list of three “next available schemes.” After a player completes their scheme, they select one of their three next available schemes. This creates a choose-your-own-adventure style of play, which we are calling "Evolving Encounters." This system is engaging, changing as the game unfolds, but it is also easy to understand; each player only needs to worry about one scheme at a time. This has proven to be a fun, engaging, and thematic way to accomplish objectives. 

Schemes aren’t the only objectives in Malifaux; there is also the strategy. Schemes represent a crew’s unique, hidden objectives, but the strategy is what brought the two opposing crews into conflict in the first place, creating a shared objective over which the players must compete. In Fourth Edition, strategies are getting some changes. Strategies are scored at the end of every turn, and scoring is now winner-takes-all; if you score the strategy, your opponent does not. However, the player who did not score will get an advantage. For example, in the collapsing mines strategy, the player who did not score chooses one of the mines being fought over to collapse and remove from the table. This creates a tense tug-of-war, culminating in a final round in which the strategy is worth double, keeping players engaged through the entire game. 

The use of terrain is also getting an update in Fourth Edition. With the new scale rule, models can be placed on top of terrain at the end of a walk action, allowing them easier access to the upper levels. Combined with new rules for jumping across rooftops, falling, and schemes that use terrain, players will be able to take full advantage of the three-dimensional space that this game offers. In fact, one of the new schemes is “Make It Look Like an Accident,” in which you try to hurl an opposing model off of a rooftop! 

Malifaux is known for its emphasis on resource management, using cards instead of dice, allowing players to cheat cards from their control hand to influence models on the table. In Fourth Edition, we take this resource management to the next level. In previous editions, the lower cards in a player's hand were basically dead weight. In Fourth Edition, you can discard a card with a value of 5 or lower to add the card’s suit to your duel and flip an additional card. This means every card in a player’s hand is a valuable resource, and its use needs to be carefully considered. And the resource management doesn’t stop with cards! 

The use of soulstones has also received an overhaul. Soulstones are the powerful gems that characters in the fiction are fighting over, used to power spells ranging from calling down blizzards to raising the dead. In previous editions, soulstones all had a generic list of effects determined by the core rules. In Fourth Edition, each crew (and sometimes each model) has a unique way to spend soulstones, powering their distinct abilities, making soulstones just as flavorful on the table as they are in the stories! And, of course, crews gain more soulstones as their models die, reflecting how the stones recharge when someone dies near them in the fiction.

Soulstones aren’t the only thing making crews more flavorful. In Fourth Edition, each leader has its own crew card, which it grants to its crew. The crew card gives new abilities and/or actions to all models in that crew. This makes the crews in Fourth Edition feel like a cohesive whole, playing together and creating combos linked by their shared abilities while taking on different roles based on their individual stat cards. Of course, since each keyword has two versions of their leader, crew cards allow each version of the leader to play very differently while still using all of the same keyword models. 

Malifaux Fourth Edition is streamlined, friendly to new players, and has a much more manageable playtime while retaining the depth and strategy our players have come to expect. We love it, and we are sure you and your community will as well. We took what was great about the previous editions of Malifaux, distilled it down, added the exciting elements described above, and created the best version of the game yet!

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Justin Gibbs is a game designer with over a decade of experience. Games are his passion, and they distract him from the ephemeral nature of existence.  Pictured is Justin and his Might Matilda