Battle Report: Malifaux 2E

Just a quick post while my work day wraps up. The other night I got a game of Malifaux in using the new 2nd Edition rules. It is DRAMATICALLY better than before. I really had a great time playing. I played the Lady Justice box crew and Henry played the Zoraida box crew. The game started off poorly for me, losing 2 Death Marshalls before inflicting any real damage. But then things started to turn around and LadyJ got a run on Zoraida which locked things up pretty hard. But more importantly, I want to chronicle my first impressions of this new edition:

• More Graceful - Henry hit this one right on. The new rules, and particularly the model stats, are just more graceful in gameplay function. It feels so much smoother as a result.
• Logical Simplifications - Several rules got slimmed down or eliminated. However more significant is that the models themselves are easier to manage. No more separate stats for attack/casting skills. It's all right in the line with the action. I like this far more. Much less referencing back and forth.
• Same Flavor - A majority of the game has that same wonderful skirmish feel to it. And the models in general still preserve their own unique flavor.
• Upgrades - Who doesn't like upgrades! I really like how they handled the upgrades features. It slimmed down models a bit but gave more options.
• Fewer Catastrophes - There's a lot less situations where suddenly an entire side of the table activates all at once and crushes you. And also a lot less of abilities completely hosing you unexpectedly. There's still a lot of surprises, but I found them to be less invoking of a table-flip desire than before. This makes the game much more approachable for me.

Ok, anyway, that was just one game, but it was against the crew that I always felt was the most broken of anything I had faced. I'm very excited to see what the next game turns out like as we start to dig out more of the more specific rules and get a deeper feel of the changes.