The Randomness of Playing Cards

In the first post on Malifaux i talked about the background story and factions. In this second article i'd like to talk about the mechanic for determining chance. Playing cards.

At first it would seem odd to use this type of mechanic. With four main factions though, four suits of cards makes sense. Each regular card suit represents different faction symbols.

Heart=Rams=Guild.
Clubs=Tomes=Arcanists
Spades=Crows=Ressurectionists
Diamonds=Masks=Neverborn

This is not hard and fast as many models use other suits for activating special abilities. More on that in another post. Wyrd sells faction coloured cards that have the suits changed for better gameplay.

Add the four suits to it the 13 cards in each suit and two jokers, and the old deck of 52 looks becomes a great way for a game to work.

When a model attempts to do something, they draw a card from the top of their own deck. The card value (1-13) determines their success or failure. If it is an action that can be resisted by a model affected by the action, they also draw a card. The appropriate statistic of the models are added to the values and the higher number is the winner of the "opposed Duel". Once a deck is exhausted, a player's discard pile is shuffled and becomes the new deck they may flip from.

If it is a combat action (melee or ranged) the number of points higher the instigator of the duel gets above the defender determines the success of the action. That level of success determines the number of cards flipped for damage.

This in itself is an interesting way of adding a large factor of randomness. If a person is keeping track of cards, they could determine whether to push their luck or not be as offensive. If a person can do that though, why aren't they in Las Vegas!

The two jokers  add a bit of absolutes. A black joker is an automatic failure. A red joker is an automatic success. Depending on what the red joker is flipped for will depend on what bonus you may get.

The amount of cards you may flip for an action may also depend on a number of things. Player actions/abilities, environment and opposing players actions/activities all can play a role.

For instance a ranged attack against a model would mean the attacker would flip one card and add their combat value to their score and the defender would also flip one card and add it to their defense score. The attacker hits the defender if it is a positive number and the amount they succeed by would determine what cards to flip for damage.

If the defender was in forest terrain (soft cover), it would garner a negative flip to the attacker. This means that two cards are flipped for the attacker and the lowest value card added to their combat value card for the weapon. The defender would flip a card and add their defense score.

If the same defender happened to spend their last action going into a defensive stance, they would get two positive flips. In this case they would flip three cards and take the best card to add to their defensive score. You can have no more than two positive flips or two negative flips. Positive and negative flips cancel each other out.

So far it seems simple and straightforward. That is until you add the element that you can "cheat fate"!

At the beginning of the game, each player has a number of cards they draw from their deck to form their own hand. Those are the cards they can use to replace cards flipped from the top of their own deck in order to turn a failure into a success. The act of replacing drawn cards during game-play is the mechanic of "Cheating Fate". The loser of a duel always has the option to cheat fate first. You may never cheat fate if you have a negative flip. You may cheat fate in all duels, for damage flips and whenever a specific rule allows you to.

The nice thing about this ability is that if an opposing player has at least one card, you never know if they can spoil your success.

At the end of each turn the discard and deck are reshuffled together. Then each player may discard cards. Then a hand is filled to its maximum amount, depending on the size of game being played. This is a lifesaver because some turns you may have a bad or meh hand.

So there's the playing card mechanic of Malifaux. I enjoy it and i think you will too. Check out the rules from the Malifaux site here. There is a plasticized deck for their "Puppet Wars" line that i would recommend and a new plasticized deck coming out from Wyrd soon if you plan on playing a lot and the current decks sold for Malifaux are nice on hard card stock but they are just cardstock.