Malifaux

What is Malifaux

Malifaux is “a character-driven tabletop skirmish game of gothic horror, steampunk invention, dark magic, and brutal choices, where every duel is decided one card at a time.” It’s made by Wyrd Miniatures, and it first came out in 2009.

The setting is “a world of impossible inventions, dangerous magic, political intrigue, ancient horrors, and ruthless ambition.” Your crew belongs to one of eight factions: the Guild, Arcanists, Resurrectionists, Neverborn, Outcasts, Bayou, Ten Thunders, and Explorer’s Society.

The current version is Fourth Edition. Wyrd announced it on April 14, 2025, ran an open beta from April 21, and started the release in August 2025. A big goal was to get a game down to two hours, and Wyrd says testing showed they got there. The fate deck stayed. So did your old models: Wyrd says every model leaving the range can be used as a legal proxy for one still in Fourth Edition.

How it plays

A deck, not dice. Each player has a 54-card Fate Deck, basically a poker deck with four suits of 13 cards and two jokers. You flip a card to resolve a duel.
Cheat fate. You hold a hand of up to seven cards. After a flip, you can swap in a card from your hand to change the result. The black joker can’t be cheated; the red joker is worth 14.
Set damage, plus raises. Attacks list a fixed damage number. Beat the target by 5 and you get a raise, and melee and missile attacks deal +1 damage for every raise.
Masters and keywords. You pick a faction and a Master to lead your crew, then choose that Master’s title, since some characters come in more than one version. You hire models that share the Master’s keyword up to the game size, usually 50 soulstones. You can bring up to two models from the rest of your faction, and they cost 1 more.
Alternating activations. Players take turns activating one model at a time. Most models get two actions and one signature action, and in a 50-soulstone game a Master gets three.
Schemes over body count. You win on victory points, not kills. Each game has a strategy and a pool of three schemes that both players pick from in secret. When you reveal and score a scheme, you pick your next one from the list on that card. The game ends after turn four.

How to start

Read the free rules. The resources page has the Comprehensive Rules Guide and the FAQ as free PDFs, both updated in September 2026. The Comprehensive Rules are the detailed reference, so Wyrd suggests reading the Rules Manual or the Quick Start Guide first.
Get the Two Player Starter. It’s $120 and has two crews of seven pre-assembled plastic models: the Clockwork Queen’s Ampersand crew against the Silken King’s Banished. It comes with two Fate Decks, two measuring widgets, tokens and markers, the stat cards, and the Quick Start Guide.
Or pick a Master. The Rules Manual is $15. Crew boxes built around one Master run from $55 to $67.50 in Wyrd’s store, and the factions page helps you choose.
Build crews in the app. The Crew Builder runs on Android, iOS, and in the browser, and lets you browse the cards and check model rules.
Play it more than one way. The Index of the Untold campaign book adds a campaign mode, cooperative play, custom leaders, and 13 scenarios.