The greater Malifaux community has been roiled by the release of the 4th Edition Open Beta. Wyrd has made some bold moves to reduce game length, streamline complexity, and Empower (ba-dum-tish) some resources the game’s rules previously wrote off as nothing more than scrap cardstock. If you take a spin through the Wyrd forums - the information aggregator for this grand project - you will see that sentiments regarding the efficacy of these bold moves are currently mixed. Seeing the feedback - bad and good - coming in hot and fast, I have been itching to get involved myself. While first-hand experience is hardly ever a qualifier for having strong opinions online, I wanted to get my feet wet before I started weighing in on the temperature of the water.
I finally got the opportunity to take my first steps into 4th Edition thanks to a couple of friends taking some PTO to game for a whole day. While I wasn’t able to join them from their 9 am kickoff, I made it out for one game after I was off work. I wanted to write up a little Battle Report of the game and a summary of my own thoughts on the state of the Beta at time of writing (this report was written with the first version of the Beta rules, pre-May 1st 2025 update).
In addition to a very fun game, I was able to get in some good conversations with the other members of my playgroup who were there - all of whom have played more 4th than me - and I will put out a short follow-up article with their thoughts soon.
A Little Context
My local meta for Malifaux really took off in 2024. Thanks to the stagnation of Age of Sigmar 3rd Edition in the ramp-up to their own 4th, many of the most active wargamers in my community were looking for something new and novel. I have been playing Malifaux since late 2022, and I was happy to lobby for the game that had quickly become my favourite incarnation of toy soldiers. While many of the would-be AoS converts bounced off, an equal number stuck around, and now there is a thriving scene for Malifaux in my medium-large Canadian Prairie City.
While our little playgroup loves the game, we are all pretty casual about it. We get in as many reps as we can, but even with most of us approaching 2-3 years of experience, we are probably at the late-beginner/early-intermediate stage with 3rd Edition.
I wanted to provide this short explainer up-top, because I think it’s important for understanding where the feedback you’ll find here is coming from. We are not grinders for the Malifaux World Series - we are casual hobbyists who are working on improving our card-flipping chops whenever we get the chance.
Crew Prep
Mei Feng 1 (or Mei Feng, Sentinel of Steel as she is now known) was my very first Malifaux Master. My first two games ever were three-way Core Box brawls between her, Jedza, and Nekima. I couldn’t think of another Master I wanted to start 4th with more (also, the beta cards for most of my other Masters have not been released yet).
Taking a look at Sentinel of Steel’s new cards, she seemed pretty Soulstone hungry. Her trademark “Ride the Rails” ability was now locked behind spending a Soulstone, and a huge number of her models have a front-of-card ability that lets you spend a Stone for advantage. I knew - for sure - that I would want to take the full 5 Stones I would be allowed at hiring - not that I really had much choice; I bought into Foundry with the intention of playing the Keyword as an Arcanist crew, and now that Mei Feng is mono-Ten Thunders, any Versatiles I could have brought are locked away. With Mei Feng also losing the models she once shared with the Bayou, my only choice was to bring a 44 Soulstone crew (5 Stones, the new max; 1 Stone consigned to the void):
Mei Feng, Sentinel of Steel
Forgeling
Metal Golem
Kang
3x Metal Gamin
3x Steelworkers
(I don’t own Neil Henry and Willie, but they have rocketed to near the top of my to-buy list for reasons we will discuss later)
While it might sound like I was being a mite salty above, I was actually fine with this crew composition. The Gamin seemed like excellent choices, they can now make 2 Scrap markers in an activation in multiple locations, and they are expendable little guys who give you a Soulstone when they die - which seemed really good with how many I thought I would need for the newly refurbed Mei Feng.
I didn’t have much of a plan beyond trying a little bit of everything and going with the flow of the game. My usual approach when playing a new system is what I like to call the “monkey bar” approach; I move from low-hanging good idea to low-hanging good idea, as long as they all lead towards my goal. While it almost never results in the most artful games, it does mean that I am always trying things, and that’s what matters when you are taking things from “on paper” to “in practice”.
Sentinel of Steel vs. Insomniac
My opponent for my first game of Malifaux 4th edition would be my buddy Yuri, the host of our impromptu gameday. Yuri was one of the AoS players who stuck around after tasting the sweet nectar of Malifaux, and yet this would be the first time we had flipped cards together.
Yuri is a Neverborn “main” and he was trying out his well-loved Nightmare crew for our first dance together:
Dreamer, Insomniac
Lord Chompy Bits, Lurking Lullaby
Teddy
Serena Bowman
Hildegard
1x Bandersnatch
Widow Weaver
Coppelius
3 Soulstones leftover.
Our scenario was:
Strategy: Recover Evidence
Deployment: Standard
Starting Scheme Pool:
Breakthrough
Detonate Charges
Light the Beacons
I had never played against Nightmare before - even in 3rd edition - but from looking at the profusion of huge claws on the other side of the table, I figured we were both going to be trying to get punchy. This suited me just fine - and I selected Detonate Charges as my first scheme. I was a little worried about the Strategy, as I had 10 bodies in my crew and Recover Evidence essentially translates kills into points (dead bodies drop Strat markers friendly to the player who got the kill, and can then be scooped up for points), but that also meant that I could dogpile my foes and play keep-away using my numbers to apply engagement-range pressure.
The roles of Attacker and Defender have been swapped in 4th. As Attacker - I would deploy my whole crew at once, while Yuri would be forced to split his forces in two. Yuri broke his crew into a “support” squad built around Dreamer, and a “slapper” squad built around Chompy and Teddy. I had him put out the big bois first - which he set on my right flank, while he set the support squad deeper into his deployment zone to the left side.
I split my own forces into three “teams” in the hope that I could bluff Light the Beacons as my first Scheme (this was far too Big Brain a line of thinking for this early in the Beta test), but my crew had Mei Feng and small group in the middle, Kang and a small group on the right flank, and the Metal Golem with a couple of support pieces on the left.
DISCLAIMER BEFORE THE UNPACK: I have piss-poor reading comprehension and totally misread Sentinel of Steel’s crew card. I thought that every model in my crew could “Ride the Rails” - but in 4th, it’s limited to unique models. Remember kids - during an edition change, don’t take any foreknowledge you think you have for granted. Neither Yuri, nor our spectators caught this error, so the Steelworkers and Gamin spent this whole game being able to use “Ride”.
Round 1
As the Attacker, I started with the initiative and got to work setting up my scrapyard. I moved Mei Feng up and - using her ranged action that just makes a scrap maker (would have killed to have this in 3e) - I began building a field of junk that will help me and hinder Yuri. The enhanced mobility of 4e was apparent immediately. Even without me accidentally cheating on “Ride the Rails”, my crew was much faster than I remembered it being. Meanwhile, Nightmare - especially with Hildegard - was scooting up the table so quickly I became extremely confident in my choice to pick “Detonate Charges” as my opening scheme.
While both myself and Yuri were making plenty of moves, we were reluctant to come to grips with each other - clearly both unsure of who would have the advantage in any given fight. Ultimately, Yuri decided to test the waters in a low risk way - using Dreamer to summon an Alp and an Insidious Madness into the Metal Golem, Gamin, and Steelworker on my left flank. This first contact taught me a couple of things:
Without commitment, anything but a dedicated beater is going to bounce off me. The omnipresence of defensive tech on the front of my cards - especially “Resilient” on the Steelworkers - means that it takes concerted effort to bring down even a low-costed Foundry model.
My tech is specifically good into Yuri’s tech. From what I could tell, the foundational power of Nightmare is high mobility, but their extra sauce - things like Shadow Lair markers and Fright Tokens - get hard-countered by my list of 3x Gamins and 3x Steelworkers. The Gamin bring unconditional marker removal, and the Steelworkers let me transform Fright tokens into Bolstered tokens with their signature action.
This timid first tango also brought a big lesson for Yuri: Dreamer, Insomniac’s specific Flicker token summoning is kinda’ bad on Recover Evidence. Thanks to those Flicker tokens, at the end of turn, his summons are killed - leaving behind Strategy markers for me to scoop up and score primary points.
While the brawl with the summons didn’t have much material effect on the game beyond landing some chip damage on my Golem and the Steelworker, it did seem to embolden both of us. Thanks to all the incidental bonus movement on the Nightmare half of the table, Chompy was in position to charge my lines on the right flank. With Teddy hot on his heels, that side would quickly turn into a major scrum, as both the Mei Feng cluster and the Kang cluster were positioned to get pulled in.
Thanks to the arrival of Chompy and little later Teddy, my overabundance of bodies allowed me to keep them engaged while also using my unintentionally buffed “Ride the Rails” to position precisely on the edge of the fight and drop scheme markers outside their engagement range - setting me up to score on Detonate Charges.
Meanwhile, with Teddy and Chompy occupying my forces, Coppelius was able to use his remarkable mobility (Onward is good, guys) to reach Yuri’s initially set-up Strategy marker and score on primary. Score 1-1
Round 2
I chose Ensnare as my next scheme, as given Teddy’s positioning, it seemed like an easy lay-up for two points. However - there were a series of misunderstandings that will make scoring this scheme messy this Round - but we will cover that in a moment.
Round 2 mostly revolved around the melee on the right flank. It became clear pretty quickly that Yuri had also selected Detonate Charges for his first scheme, as he used Coppelius and the newly arrived Hildegard to dance around the outside of the fight, dropping Scheme markers. For my part, Kang and a Metal Gamin brought down Lord Chompy Bits; while another Gamin set to work removing Coppelius’ scheme markers using its “Recycle” action - or it attempted to - as I had some truly atrocious luck with flipping into passive TNs this round.
While most of the action was concentrated in the brawl, Chompy’s demise shifted some attention to the left flank. During Dreamer’s activation, Yuri summoned a Daydream and resummoned Chompy to menace my Metal Golem. The Golem had spent its earlier activation motoring up the table to try and make it to Yuri’s table half. It had ended its turn in position to pick up a Strategy marker for me on the next round. This is important, because Dreamer’s summoning shenanigans allowed two scheme markers to land near the Golem, and a Fright token to land on it.
That Fright token allowed Widow Weaver to Obey the Golem during her activation and scoop up that Strategy marker and give Yuri a point instead - as well as setting up a 2-point Detonate Charges for Yuri at the end of the Round.
Now, Teddy. While Yuri was still too new with 4e to know exactly what I was planning with Teddy, it was pretty clear I wanted the Big Bear to be engaged with my crew and near Scheme markers, so he focused-fire into one of the Steelworkers (obliterating the poor guy) in order to carve himself an escape route. This is where the misunderstandings start. Teddy scored the “Bowled Over” trigger on the killing blow. The way Yuri and I read things, we thought this meant that the Steelworker would be killed and Teddy would essentially get a free 4” push out of combat (or 2” push in this case, as he was in Severe Terrain) - combined with his Place from Unnatural Speed - he would be securely out of my scoring range. This is how we played it after significant humming-and-hawing.
However! In a post-game analysis with the playgroup, we came to the conclusion that the timing of triggers as it relates to the application of damage would force Teddy to follow the Steelworker - and the direction that Teddy’s push would have obligated the Steelworker to go, would have kept Teddy in combat with another Steelworker and a Gamin - and still probably allowed for the two-point Ensnare.
With Teddy now out of my clutches, I hastily tried to set up the same trap for Serena Bowman (who had ventured a little too close to the violence), but I misread the timing on Ensnare and thought it was scored at the end of round, which meant I ended up missing my window to score it this round - oops!
Round 2 ended with Yuri scoring 3 and me scoring 1 (Primary from one of those Flicker’d Strategy markers leftover from the last round). Score 4-2 for Yuri.
Round 3
Despite my flubbing on scoring Ensnare last Round, I rallied after realizing I could score it at the top of this Round on Hildegard and still get two points (Score 4-4). The trade-off was that the enemy activation I scored it from was Coppelius yeeting himself into my deployment zone to get Yuri a two-point Breakthrough thanks to some additional scheming from Widow Weaver and Dreamer later in the round.
As we started getting activations going, we glanced at the clock and realized that it was nearly 10 pm on a weeknight and we both had work in the morning. So we decided that after a few activations, it was time to talk things out - as we both had pretty clear scoring paths for the remainder of the game.
However, before we skip to the wrap-up, I want to highlight Mei Feng’s activation. The Bandersnatch had spent the game slowly creeping up towards the fight on the right flank. At the end of Round 2, Mei Feng had reached the melee herself, got into it with Serena Bowman, and whiffed an attack. During this Round, Yuri had used Hildegard to fish Serena out of immediate danger from Mei - but not far enough. On her turn, Mei Feng charged the Bandersnatch, also managing to tag Serena. Thanks to a hand of high Rams, Mei was able to stack the “Reactive Chemicals” trigger on her Melee attack to nearly kill the Bandersnatch and kill Serena through her Demise trigger during a single activation. The only thing that saved them both was that my last “high Ram” was only a 10 and Yuri had a 13 to cheat in to save them. This made me really excited to play Sentinel of Steel again, as she seems like she has the potential to be extremely threatening if she can get into an opposing crew’s support models.
Anyways, talking through the rest of Round 3 - Yuri was able to score 2 for Breakthrough, but I was able to scoop up enough Strategy markers to deny his ability to score Primary. Meaning that going into our hypothetical Round 4, the score would be 6 - 5 for Yuri.
“Round 4”
By this point, incidental damage had mauled both of our crews pretty badly - meaning that odds were good we could both scoop up 2 points for Recover Evidence pretty easily. Yuri had the mobility in Teddy and Coppelius to get 2 points from Take the High Ground; meanwhile there wasn’t anything Yuri could reasonably do to keep me from scoring 2 points off Frame Job on the Golem - this meant that we ended things with a 10 - 9 victory for Dreamer.
Final Thoughts (Game Overall)
I am going to echo the consensus and say that Empower and the evolving Scheme mechanics in 4th Edition are both bangers. Four Rounds and immediate scoring both feel great and, while we did a lot of talking and consulting the rules that dragged things out, will definitely have the desired effect of shaving off play time once folks are familiar with the rules.
Maybe it was just my crew choice, but the “increased lethality” that everyone has been talking about didn’t seem applicable to our game. The only casualty that wasn’t a summon was one of my Steelworkers that got gotten by Teddy, but that still took the scary bear’s whole activation. I am not dismissing the concerns over the lethality of 4th Edition that others have raised, but I am instead highlighting a potentially very wide disparity between “haves” and “have-nots” when it comes to defensive abilities.
The one piece of critical feedback for the edition that stands out so far is the prevalence of Soulstone triggers. Right now, with so many cool things for each crew locked behind Soulstones, 50 SS games are basically 45 SS games - it feels like the “correct” move is always to maximize your pool, which is fine in theory, but it does introduce a level of monotony and strategic flattening.
As well, some of the Soulstone abilities are so weak compared to their alternatives that it ends up being a line of dead text on the card. For example, I can’t reasonably see me ever choosing to use the front-of-card Soulstone ability for the Forgeling when “Tap the Leyline” is so good and synergizes so well with the Golem/Gamin ability to pitch a card to make a Scrap marker.
Final Thoughts (My crew)
Having played quite a bit of Mei Feng 1 during 3e, this new “Sentinel of Steel” incarnation feels like she’s got much stronger legs. At any given time, 2/3s of my crew were carrying Bolstered tokens, which - when combined with the robust defensive tech of the crew - meant that I was really tough to take down (Mei Feng herself is functionally Df 7).
Ride the Rails being confined to unique Foundry models means that - if I want to keep playing Sentinel of Steel at higher levels - picking up Willie and Neil Henry will be a must. It is too powerful a tool to restrict to a small collection of my models.
This crew is Soulstone hungry. In addition to Ride the Rails, there are so, so many ways to passively consume Soulstones. I would love to see some alternate ways to unlock some of the features that are currently trapped behind Soulstone triggers. Maybe allowing some models to use Bolstered tokens in place of the Soulstones? Forcing the Foundry player to make a meaningful choice between their defenses and their cool tricks is a good way to add to the skill ceiling of the crew without kneecapping their potential.
Otherwise, a lot of text on the Foundry cards is functionally dead. If you are doing any sort of proactive planning, odds are good that you will have budgeted most of your five Soulstones in advance and it feels bad having abilities on your cards that you can’t use.
I didn’t manage to Perforate a single model, and when given the chance, it wasn’t worth it - as that model was already in my face. The threat of Perforated did allow me to use Scrap markers for board control and zoning, but if the intention is for Perforated to be a decent amount of Foundry’s damage output, there needs to be a meaningful way to apply it at range into a variety of crews.
1st Test Complete
I remain cautiously optimistic about 4th Edition. Seeing the round of changes that dropped on May 1st has only strengthened that sense of optimism. It seems like Wyrd is taking the feedback provided by playtesters seriously and is moving in the right direction. There is a part of me that mourns the loss of some of the more idiosyncratic and weird parts of the game that were facilitated by 3e’s individual model complexity, but I think that the combination of Crew Cards + 2 versions of a Master, both with unique Totems, will allow for a similar level of depth when it comes to the gameplay experience. I also can’t argue with anything that makes the game more accessible for new players - which I think the new set up successfully does. The innovation of Crew Cards also means that having your Master killed is much less of a feels-bad moment.
I am hoping to get some more games in soon, but for now - I’ll keep my eyes on the forums and eagerly await the release of the rest of my keywords.
Great write-up! Thank you!