Malifaux for Beginners - Triggers - Melee and Ranged (Cb)

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.

Most models in Malifaux have at least one Trigger and the majority have more than one. These will have a suit requirement (many have more than one) and are declared once you have your Duel total established. The activation conditions vary from Trigger to Trigger so getting straight into some examples will probably be best.

Here's a simple Trigger explained in detail.

The Trigger is Rot which is common amongst Resurrectionists. This one is activated when a Melee attack is used as is indicated by the Cb at the beginning of the description (circled in light red) which will coincide with the appropriate stat on a Weapon (Cb), a Spell (Ca) or will be defensive (Df) and therefore be activated when your attacked or hit. In this case it coincides with the Punk Zombies Katana Cb (also circled in light red). The Trigger requires two Crow cards to activate (1 and 2 on the Trigger picture). In many cases you will notice that one of the required suits is greyed out (1 in this case) this means that the model already has one of the required suits 'built-in' to their attack and will therefore only need to get another one from their Duel total.

We'll do some full examples later but there's a few more points we need to cover first.

Declaring Triggers is completely optional. Even if you have all the suit requirements 'built-in' to the appropriate Cb, Ca or Df you still have no obligation to use one if it doesn't benefit you to do so (you don't have to use it even if it does benefit you but I don't see why you wouldn't, lol).

You can also only use one per Action. Even if you fulfil the requirements for multiple Triggers you can only select one of them to use. If you wish to use a different one on a subsequent Action or Activation then that's fine but one per Action is the limit.

Triggers don't cost Action Points (AP). They're additional effects that may (or may not) occur in addition to the attack, spell, etc. and must be declared when you have your Duel total. Even if the effect itself is identical in name (or function) to something that would normally cost Action Points (AP) , Triggers don't.

Should the model your attacking have a Defensive (Df) Trigger that they wish to use then the model with the lowest Duel total declares their Trigger first. In the event of a tie the Defender gets to go first.

I'm going to skip straight to the relevant bit rather than do the whole duel. Should you need to brush-up on how Melee Duels work the tutorial can be found here. Lets move onto those examples then.

Example 1 - Simple Offensive Trigger.
Lets say Lady Justice is going to hit something...it doesn't matter what as we're going to presume she succeeds...

She flips for her duel total and gets a 13 of Tomes (circled in green below).

As usual she adds her Cb to the flip result to get her total of 20. Now the player has established their Duel total they check their Triggers in order to decide if they wish to (and are able to) use a Trigger. This attack used Cb so therefore they can only use Triggers that start with a Cb of which Lady Justice has two. Both require a single Ram to activate and though the card she flipped isn't a ram she has one built in to her Greatsword Attack (It's circled in light red) so she can select either having fulfilled all the necessary requirements for both but unfortunately the Tome (circled in green) is useless to her. She selects Critical Strike...

Critical Strike (Weapon Name) - The named weapon inflicts +1 Damage (Dg) for each Ram in this models Duel total. If a weapon isn't named then it applies to all the models melee attacks.

...and applies the effects of the Trigger which in this case increases her Damage (Dg) by 1.per Ram. If the flipped card had been a Ram suit as well then the damage would have been +2 as per the cards description.

Example 2 - Offensive Trigger.
This time Killjoy is going to hit something and as with the above example we're going to presume it hits...

He flips a 9 of Crows (Circled in green below) giving him a total of 16.


Which we'll say is enough to hit his enemy and his enemy has no defensive Triggers to use. He already has a Ram built into his Cleavers Cb but his Drag Trigger only works after a Hooked Chain Strike which he isn't using. However he has the option to Cheat Fate using a card from his Control/Cheat hand before he declares his Trigger...lets say that's exactly what he does...

He uses a Mask card from his Control Hand which has the suit he requires for the Trigger he wishes to use. The Mask card replaces The Crow card and the player re-checks his total and discovers that he still hits. He now has the suits he requires to use the 'Onslaught' Trigger which he promptly declares...he now gets to immediately make a Cleaver Strike (as specified in his Trigger description) which costs him no Action points (AP) at all.


It is also possible to make use of the Use Soulstone ability (as long as you have it, obviously) to add a card and gain the suit from that one as well should you so desire.

Ranged Strikes also use Cb so are functionally identical in format to the examples above. Defensive Triggers and those for Spells will have their own tutorials as there are some differences in how they work.

As usual if you have any specific queries about this tutorial or find a mistake that needs correcting then feel free to leave a comment below.