Malefactor Deep Dive
I’m going to go through each of the in-development designs and outline some of the key mechanics, inspirations and other areas. The first one is Malefactor, the most complete of the full-scale games. And contrary to the above image, there are not currently any dogs in Malefactor.
What is Malefactor
Malefactor is a two-player miniatures game that sees one player taking control of four knightly Hunters as they investigate a village in search of a mage in a 2’x2′ play area. The other player plays the mage or Malefactor AND all of the villagers. Importantly for Malefactor, the Hunters do not know which Villager is the Malefactor and must use a combination of social deduction on their human opponent and actions in the game to work out who their true enemy is and take them out.
The game starts out in the Investigation Act as the Hunters interrogate and try to deduce which Villager is the Malefactor. Once the Hunters have successfully identified their target, the Malefactor has an opportunity to manually activate their traps and has a chance to lose some of their carefully collected mana – this short Act is known as the Discovery. Finally, we have the Battle Act. This final portion of the game is the duel between the Malefactor and the Hunters and is where the Malefactor can throw out all kinds of unique spells to destroy or delay their opponents, and the Hunters must race against time to kill or capture the Malefactor.
Each Malefactor uses a different magical archetype or Craft, as they are called in the game. This might be a Necromancer that brings back the dead or summons Skeletons to fight for them, or a Leech that uses something akin to life magic and can sprout deadly trees. All of the Malefactors have unique spells and traps that give each a distinct playstyle in each phase of the game.
Similar to the Malefactor, each of the hunters’ Knightly Orders has a range of abilities specific only to their faction. The Hunters can further differentiate themselves through the equipment they take into battle. There are some limitations depending on the Knightly Order and equipment type to keep list building interesting and hopefully prevent some overpowered combinations.
What Are The Inspirations
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten less and less interested in big battle games and more into skirmish games in general. I think that is partly due to having less time now that I’m a Dad and work commitments only growing. I also used to play a lot of Warhammer 40,000 and 10th Edition just hasn’t done it for me. So I’ve played a lot more of games like Frostgrave, Rangers of Shadowdeep, Marvel Crisis Protocol and always had an interest in things like Necromunda and Malifaux (although never played them). And pre-getting into miniatures games I was a huge board game fan in general with a sizable collection of different kinds of games.
So I think it has been somewhat natural to think about merging some common themes of mechanics from board games into miniatures games. I originally had the idea that it would be cool if something like Letters from Whitechapel or Fury of Dracula existed in miniatures game form. That slow start of having this massive area where your hidden enemy could be hiding slowly shriking as you find out more and more information and the tension in the game steadily ramps up until the final moments of the game. And building tension is one of the key tenents of Malefactor’s design.
Another key inspiration is less of an inspiration and more of a gap in the current miniatures games landscape. I play loads of games over the years and the majority fall into either the kill all of your opponents models or stand in range of an objective categories, and I wanted to create something that took the best parts of these types of games but didn’t neccessarily tie winning the game to either. We have the kill your enemies part in either killing off the Hunters or the Malefactor, but there game doesn’t need you to clear the board for victory. There are also the traps which the Malefactor wants you to be near but the Hunters rarely do, which creates almost a reverse objective marker dynamic. There is also some risk-reward thrown in as the trap may not go off and chancing it could mean getting a Hunter into a winning position.
Pinball Alert
Pinball: …
Nevi: Don’t you even. All I said was position and I knew you’d coming flying out of nowhere. I could feel it as I was typing.
Pinball: I’m saying nothing, the words speak for themselves.
Nevi: ….
What’s Next
Currently, Malefactor stands at just over 11,000 words. I want to create a rough campaign structure for people who may want to tie a series of games together and expand on my notes for 3+ players for those who may want to divide up the Hunters among different players. After that, I’m pretty happy with the core rules and factions. I have ideas for more factions, but I need to make sure the core game is tuned first.
We are currently in Open Playtest, so if you want to get involved head over and check out our playtest pack. I also have a feedback form that you can find below as well. I read all of the feedback and everything you write helps make the game even better.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17FZsdB294RGTjEF_iZsN1KTE5ux9nmd0?usp=sharing
I want to cover one last thing in the post, before closing out, the core themeing. I had some recent feedback about the core premise of the Malefactor being too onesided-ly good vs evil and that killing (even by accident) innocent villagers is a problem. This was someting I had not considered at all, if you feel the same way and would not feel comfortable playing Knights (however morally ambiguous) who are cutting through Jim the musican or Better the washer’s daughter, let me know. Either post it below, in the Discord or via Instagram. I feel like it was a massive oversight and may require a rework of one of the core elements of the game. This was incredibly valuable feedback and something I don’t think I would have seen by myself.
Thank you reading this dive into Malefactor. I hope you found it insightful and shared some of my inspirations and vision for the game. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and Facebook and join the Discord to strike up a conversation. Or check out one our micro-games over on Wargames Vault. Until next time.
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