Anyone Play Heavy Gear or Malifaux?

We used to have a pretty good group going for Heavy Gear more up North, but it's largely fell apart due to personal reasons, people moving, etc. Was always a fan of the universe and got sizable force of Northern States figures that feel sad packed away. Any old school HG players or any that have dabbled in the current editions? Right now got only one other opponent who plays and since we play with others so many games we usually can't get time off to play HG anymore.

Some of us are also looking into trying Malifaux soon, wondering if anyone been playing it down south perhaps.

I've been pestering Joel about Malifaux and he just got the greenlight and can order stuff from it. Was thinking of picking up some stuff.

Yea they just got a US distributor so more places should be able to carry it. It's skirmish game so you don't need many figs, a force can be less than 10 figs easily.

Any links to view or get more info on?
Is like BattleTech, At-43, or 40K?

JerryB

Maliflux is a diceless miniature game. It looks pretty sweet and the models are awesome....

http://wyrd-games.net/

Malifaux is a mix of gothic, steampunk, and western 32mm skirmish game.

The company has been around for many years selling their figs, but they only recently created the game Malifaux to go along with the figs they have been selling for years. As said no dice, you use a deck of cards to determine results. Skirmish battles so you only use a few figs. Lots of style. Each player draws a card and adds the number of the card to the proper stat. Players will also have a hand of cards that they draw each turn, and from these cards in hand your allowed to "cheat fate" and replace the card you drew for the skill check, with a card from your hand during your turn. So you got the randomness of a dice roll with drawing cards, but players can manipulate their draws with their hand of cards, but they got to be careful as both players have a hand of cards to use to cheat fate with.

If your talking about Heavy Gear then this is the main site for the game: http://www.dp9.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73&Itemid=55

Been around for quite some time, in the 90's they had a series of popular video games as well, and it originally started as a RPG. It's a mech heavy game but it's a much more combined arms universe unlike Battletech which is primarily focused on battle mechs. Gears in the HG universe are smaller and more in scale with a walking tank, and more agile. Game is more army based where your mechs work in squads with specialized purposes. A force might have 2-3 squads of mechs, along with infantry, air support, tanks, etc. Gameplay is kinda hard to compare as it has it's own uniqueness to it, but it's nothing like Battletech outside of having mecha in it.

Malifaux looks like it does not require large cash outlay and I like steampunk story lines. I am interested.

Heavy Gear looks interesting also. I would like to play a several games before I completely comment. Do you have two armies? Are you willing to demo, teach and then play?

I went to the HG website and some armies have starter kits, is this enough? Usually how many box sets do you need to start with. On average will you spend $100, $200 or how much to start an army?

Right now I am pretty happy with AT-43, Battle Tech and Pyrites, but I open to other games that do not require large amounts of money to play and are not cheesy and do not require a lot of painting.

Thanks for you time.


JerryB

For Malifaux I would recommend checking out the universes fluff which can be found on the official site in the forum http://wyrd-games.net/forum/index.php on the left side under Chronicles V1-3. These contain most of the fluff that is presented in the main rulebook and gives you a feel for the unique and kinda wacky universe. malifaux figs are not the cheapest, though they are 32mm so they are bigger than your standard 28mm that most companies use, but yes the game is not to expensive to get into.

Heavy Gear is unfortunately not as cheap to get into. A standard army of 1000 points can be 150-350 but greatly depends on what army and build. There is one particular army for example that costs a fortune to put together and most stay away from it.

I used to actually sell Heavy Gear myself, had a wholesale account set up with DP9 (probably still do) and would get stuff cheaper for folks, but I would not recommend the game on cost factors. It's probably one of the major negatives of the game, the cost is pretty high. Only got one large army though, never did get around to a 2nd force though I planned to at some point.

Kyle, than you being frank. I will scratch HG off for now. I am still interested but not willing spend a lot of money until my employment status changes.

The mix forces really had me and I hope the game play is faster and less complex then BattleTech.

I will research Malifaux further. It appears like Necromunda of sorts, with a different story line of course.

JerryB

Malifaux looks interesting.

What do you recommend to start with Heavy Gear, the starter sets or go through the rules and build your own? Or lets put it another way, are the starter sets a good deal or crap?

Also, how does it compare rules-wise to Battletech?

Heavy Gear is really nothing like battletech rule wise. It's a much more streamlined game for army vs army play. Battletech is a more detailed system for dealing with combat between battlemechs so you got to micromanage each mech to a certain degree. Damage for example in Heavy gear is done in levels, a unit takes a hit it is lightly damaged and suffers some penalties. If damaged again it is increased to medium damage, and so on with further penalties till finally destroyed. Damage is not set in stone and the better you roll the more damage you can deal so with a good shot you can potentially take out something in one hit. In old versions of Heavy Gear damage was more complicated and detailed, you would assign it to specific locations and such, but it slowed game down greatly. Army buying is similar to say 40k, though for your units you can not only buy upgrades, but can downgrade them. For example you might strip some armor off some mechs to cut their point costs down, or remove a rocket pod from a gear squad because you think you don't need it and can spend points elsewhere.

Starter deals, well they aren't amazing values, the one with rulebook bundle is like 5 bucks savings only. The other starter packs that come with only a quick start rulebook saves a little more but you don't get the fullbook which I think is very nice to have. The starter sets with 10 or so figs for example is about 610 points while the common standard game size is about 1000-1500 points. If your interested in seeing the rules the quickstart rules are actually available in pdf on their site at: http://www.dp9.com//download/L&L%20Quickstart%20revised.pdf

I would probably want to get the main rulebook before anything for Heavy Gear Blitz Lock and Loaded. It features majority of the army lists also while the quickstart omits the fluff, and army lists and only has the starter force lists.

If your interested in the universe or checking out game first, I would recommend possibly picking up the main rulebook then which is pretty packed with everything needed. Or at least just check out the linked quickstart guide to get a feel for the gameplay. The system is somewhat unique and is partially based off the silcore system DP9 employs for their rpgs.

I would recommend ccgarmory if you were looking at buying as they got the best overall discount on HG products with about 28% off on average http://www.ccgarmory.com/heavygrear.html

Anyone have a link to the Malifaux rules?

Rules are not free online, gotta get the rulebook. You can get examples of play and overview of the line here: http://talk.tabletopgamingnews.com/index.php?topic=601.0

Lot of useful links, but Wyrd never put out any kind of quick start or downloadable rules.

an amazing malifaux table and also a little bit more info on the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDxXQOIpxUw
It looks cool to me just I don't know if I wana do another game

Very cool table, though normally Malifaux is played on a 3x3 or slightly bigger playing area. It's pretty nice small scale game

If skirmish level games with fairly cheap entry levels interest you, I would HIGHLY recommend INFINITY. http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity_ENG/

Game has been around quite a while, it's from Spain and has amazing figures. 28mm skirmish, forces tend to be 10 or few figs. Rule set is the most unique miniature game I have ever seen, and for those on budgets, the entire rulebook, army lists, weapons, and even the expansion material are made all available free online in pdf format. They sell nice hardbound book versions of the stuff with additional art and fluff, but otherwise the actual game is online for free. INFINITY is a personal fave.

You play Infinity, Kyle? I just got the Aleph starter and Joel should have the rulebooks I ordered (I went ahead with the actual books) tomorrow, funny enough. What factions do you play?

Long story short - I was bugging Joel about Malifaux, he couldn't get it, so I picked up Infinity instead. Will try to get some Mailfaux too, as soon as I pick a faction.

Any tips on Infinity? Are Starter vs starter battles balanced and a good representation of the game?

Reason why Joel probably had trouble with Malifaux was that they had no US distributor. Only last month or so did Wyrd Miniatures finally get Alliance to start carrying the line in the US so lot more US retailers should start carrying the game now as it's much easier to get ahold of.

I play Yu Jing in Infinity, though I'm looking at getting Ariadna force together to have 2 forces and to be able to let others play for any reason. The Infinity Starters are not balanced really, they are kind of a mix of grunt with a few elite troopers mixed in, they are good for getting some good essential figs.

With Infinity I would say take it easy because I think most people who try it, get massively confused. The game is not really complicated, it just is completely unlike any other miniature game on the market that people don't instantly get it like you do with concepts in other games. The whole concept of the Infinity system is that both players are basically playing at the same time, almost anything done can be reacted too.

Other tip, use LOTS of terrain. The game is very fast paced, and very deadly since both players are essentially playing at the same time. You can have a match end on turn one, on your own turn if you play badly or luck of the dice. You want to have lots of hiding places on your boards and not play on big open set ups as your just asking for a quick game in such a set up. Game is very deadly.

I would also say that Infinity's unique system also makes it quite a balanced game. I don't feel like really one particular faction is overpowered and the combat system really keeps things in check. The game really will punish a person for tactical mistakes more than a mistake in building your army. Also building armies involves having point values like normal, and then a separate allocation of points that is used to purchase specialist figures like heavy weapons. The system basically stops min maxing of weaponry since you have a set amount of points to purchase special gear or weapons outside of your normal army allocation.

Aleph look pretty cool, they are the new faction just added so they only got a few releases right now. I haven't looked at their army list so not sure if you can make a full competitive army with them yet. They should be getting stuff on regular basis, the one nice thing about Infinity is that it's been around a while and they release new figs every month.

Infintiy looks very similar to AT-43, which has a skirmish version. I already have the models and I like the system. Pre-built, pre-painted, and a great game system.

JerryB

Infinity is nothing like AT-43 or AT-43 Tactics which is more akin to a board game as it is similar to Descent and Heroquest.

So Infinity doesn't happen in the future?

Its not Sci-Fi theme?

There isn't constant warfare between different alien races?

I know for a fact you do have to build and paint the figures. I believe they are metal also.

AT-43 is not a board game. I thought you had played AT-43, you had/have the figures.

JerryB

jerryb wrote:So Infinity doesn't happen in the future?

Its not Sci-Fi theme?

There isn't constant warfare between different alien races?

I know for a fact you do have to build and paint the figures. I believe they are metal also.

AT-43 is not a board game. I thought you had played AT-43, you had/have the figures.

JerryB

AT-43 is not a skirmish game, only skirmish style game they have for AT-43 is AT-43 Tactics, which is a rpg hybrid. The concept of Tactics supplement is similar in play style to what is found in boards games Descent, Hybrid, Heroquest, where you have a GM presenting scenario challenges to another group of players who control a single character. The focus is on narrative based scenarios with chained scenario linking to create campaigns. Characters are designed to be fully customizable. Not sure you have much familiarity with skirmish games? Ever try the original Confrontation, which was one of the first true skirmish level games before Rackham turned it into a large scale wargame? Mordheim and Necromunda can be considered skirmish as well.

As for background of the universe, well again they are nothing alike, of course if you wish to coin all sci fi universes as being the same, well that's up to you. INFINITY is not a universe of constant warfare, it's actually much more subdued as the game is primarily human with much of the conflics being small scale skirmishes kept out of the limelight. The skirmish design of the game is meant to mimic the shadow conflicts being fought by the various corporations and factions, hence you don't have vehicles, no giant mecha and tanks. Large scale warfare is very rare in Infinity actually for many reasons, only in few fronts is their actual warfare and that is against the alien invaders, which Infinity has only one such race. AT-43 universe has actually more in common with 40k with it's massive scale warfare. The fluff of AT-43 involves huge scale conflict with races who control hundreds of worlds, giant naval battles with thousands of warships, weapons of mass destruction.

Style of the universe is also very different as AT-43 was heavily inspired with retro themes of WWII mixed with sci fi thanks to Rackhams famous concept artist Paolo Parente who also was big influence on Swedish designed Mutant Chronicles that also was massively filled with retro themes. It's a universe of all out war with continual escalation through the fluff, with some pretty epic trappings. Infinity is mainly based off the works of Masamune Shirow, famous for his work on Dominion, Ghost in the Shell, and Appleseed universes. Super high tech societies, and heavy use of cyborgs/robotics, with strong Japanese influences ingrained into the style of everything.

As for them being metal, building and painting, how is that related to AT-43? Your not much into hobby aspects of gaming?

I'm agreeing with Kyle on this one. I just now started reading through the Infinity rulebook, and having read the AT-43 rulebook (as well as the Tactics ones), they're NOTHING alike. This really is like a more refined, advanced Necromunda.

Hey Kyle, I have a question, do you think Joel has enough terrain for a decent game of Infinity? Or is what he has too heavily reliant on ruins?

Terrain just has to be able to cover a good amount of table and provide enough areas for being able to keep figures in cover. You don't want a warmachine or 40k style of table where you can clearly see your opponents figs from eye level, at deployment your going to want all your figs to be out of view in some manner because the game system will turn things bloody right away as soon as the first shot is fire.

I haven't played at Joels in years so I wouldn't know what hes got, but as long as you got terrain things should be fine. Infinity though is perhaps not something that plays as well with forest terrain and a few hills, the game makes much better use of urban style of terrain. We have used many times the AT-43 cargo containers which are easy to stack up and create shipping docks and such with for easy terrain that hides figs well. Open areas of terrain are death traps so if anything it might be best to go with a terrain building method of starting with terrain placement in the middle and expanding outward.

The pictures in the books give you good idea of some nice terrain layouts as figs have lots of avenues to move through, yet many places to take cover and move out of lines of sight.

So I have been doing some research on Malifaux I'm really drawn to the minis there beautiful and I love that a normal size game is only 4-5 models. That makes the games short and marking getting into the game cheap.

If people were wondering how the game works I found a video of some people playing looks simple enough you really need to only watch like 5min somewhere in the middle to get the idea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTtHRBol8OA