Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Malifaux for Beginners - Red Joker

Editors Note - This tutorial is for version 1.5 of the Malifaux rules and has been left available for reference only. Some Malifaux 2nd Edition Tutorials can be found here...as well as quite a few of these old ones, lol.


Malifaux uses a deck of cards instead of the dice that your all most likely used to in the majority of miniature and board games. As well as the traditional 52 suit cards Malifaux also makes use of both the Jokers, One Red and the other Black.

The Red Joker is utilised in a number of ways...

Firstly the Red Joker is the highest value card in the deck and has a value of 14. The observant amongst you will notice that the card itself has no suit on it, this is because you can allocate any suit you wish to it when it is drawn (just the one mind you) for the purposes of abilities and Triggers.

Secondly when drawn for a Damage (Dg) Flip the Red Joker not only automatically causes Severe Damage but allows you to flip a 2nd card whose result adds to the damage of the Red Joker. This extra card cannot be cheated but it's a nice bonus and on high Damage (Dg) weapons this rarely matters.

Additionally, when drawn for Heal flips and Wound Reduction flips the Red Joker restores all Wounds (Wd) or reduces Wounds (Wd) taken to zero as appropriate.

It is worth noting however that if you draw both the Red and Black Jokers you have to use the Black Joker which is unfortunate as that's worth zero. However if the Red Joker is flipped as part of a negative flip (picking multiple cards where you have to pick the lowest) you may still select the Red Joker as long as there's no Black Joker in there.

Do we need examples for this one? Possibly Damage Flips might benefit from a couple ;-)

Example 1 - Damage Flips.


Misaki is flipping for Damage (Dg) and is fortunate enough to flip the Red Joker (1) which counts as Severe Damage, which is in this case 6 Damage (Dg). Misaki's player is now allowed to flip a 2nd card (2) which turns out to be a 2 of Rams equalling Weak Damage (Dg) which is (in this case) 2 Damage (Dg). This gives a total of 8 (6 from the Severe and 2 from the Weak) Wounds (Wd) caused...more than enough to defeat most foes...

Example 2 - Another Damage Flip.


In this example Misaki has again flipped the Red Joker (1) but in this case has flipped the dreaded Black Joker (2) as her 2nd card. Because the Black Joker counts as zero no additional Damage is added leaving the total at 6 Damage (Dg). In the case of Damage Flips the Black Joker doesn't negate the Damage (Dg) inflicted by the Red Joker.

If you have any queries or notice any errors in this tutorial feel free to raise them in the comments section.


Acknowledgements.
Thanks to A.D. of The Hobbynomicon for his troubleshooting assistance.

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