l like Malifaux. Regular readers will already be aware of this, and may even have seen some of my painted Malifaux miniatures. I played quite a lot of second edition and have enjoyed a wee bit of third edition. What I’ve not tried is the Malifaux roleplaying game, Through the Breach. It is sitting on my shelf, though…
I should give it a go with the wee group locally why do play a bit of Malifaux. It’s a good setting with lots of fun characters and stories. Bundle of Holding has a pair of Malifaux bundles up at the moment. Let’s take a look!
Bundle 1: Through the Breach
This is a repeat bundle from a few years back. It features the second edition of the game and really has everything you need to get started. This is a bundle with two tiers. The first tier costs $17.95 and gets you the core game and 4 Penny Dreadfuls:
The core book is all you really need to get started with the game. Through the Breach shares Malifaux’s card-based system, which sees you play with a Fate Deck (or a regular pack of playing cards) rather than dice. I like the twist this puts on the game, and the fact that you can maintain a small hand of cards with which to “cheat” specific results. The book is a nice, bit, weighty tome with lots of art, some background, and clear layouts. I’ve got the hardback here, and it’s a well-presented book and game.
Penny Dreadfuls are going to feature heavily in this bundle. These are one-shot adventures that you can use for your games of Through the Breach. Even if you don’t use them, they give an idea of the tone, setting, and characters of the setting. That’s really useful for a GM who might not be super familiar with the tabletop game and, as usual, you can always cannibalise these to steal the best bits if you don’t want to use them verbatim. There’s a good mix in these four adventures, with stories covering union agents, investigations into strange happenings, taking down cults, and time travel. I always assumed these were much smaller books than they seem to be. I was expecting Penny Dreadfuls to be little booklets, but these are all over 100 pages long.
The second tier of the bundle is priced on a threshold that is currently sitting at $31.53. It contains 5 expansions and another 6 Penny Dreadfuls:
There’s a ton of content in this tier. First up, we’ve got faction-specific expansions. I love that. You’ve got books here for The Guild, the Neverborn, the Gremlins of the Bayou, and the Arcanists. It’s great to see these factions fleshed out. it does not include From Shadows, the book for the Ten Thunders faction. I’d like to see them add one in the future for the Explorer’s Guild. More options are always cool, and I imagine a campaign using Into the Bayou or playing as Neverborn would feel very different from a typical, human-centric campaign.
There’s a bunch more Penny Dreadfuls here, too. These take you into the Bayou, set off to rob a train, see you studying dinosaurs, ask you to investigate missing starlets, help fight off some Silurids, and have you tackle outbreaks of disease. Again, there’s a lot of content here.
I’d say that this is a fantastic bundle. The first tier is a must. This is obvious; it has the rules. The second tier is one I would also recommend to all players. Often, the second tier is more GM-centric, but the expansions would be useful for all players if you want more options for player characters. Yeah, I strongly recommend both tiers.
You can click here to visit the bundle page at Bundle of Holding.
Bundle 2: Penny Dreadfuls
Bundle of Holding is running a second bundle of Through the Breach! Fantastic. This is a single-tier bundle, costing $17.95. It gets you the an expansion book and 10 Penny Dreadfuls.
The expansion book, From Shadows, is the Ten THunders faction which was conspicuously absent from the prior bundle. As much as they are probably my least favourite faction in Malifaux, it’s great to see the Ten Thunders included here. I like the idea of the faction as infiltrators, and there’s a lot of room to have fun with that in a roleplaying game.
The bundle then presents a pair of Penny Dreadfuls; In Defense of Innocense and Return to Innocence. These form something of a 2-parter. In the first adventure, you defend a town from the threat of the Neverborn. In the second, the town has grown following your protection of it. That’s not the end of the story, though. We’ve got murder, intrigue, investigations, and secrets.
We’re then got a further 8 Penny Dreadfuls, bringing the total across both bundles to 20. That’s a lot of content. I do notice these are much smaller books, though. The first one I clicked is 28 pages long. The others appear to be similar. Of these 8 adventures, a couple stand out as potential highlights. First up is Waves of Cordacove, which takes place mostly on Earth for a change. I also like the look of Blood and Snow for bringing in the mysterious and dangerous Fae. Lots of options!
This bundle is not a strong as the first, and is not a required purchase for anyone, really. I do think there’s still worthwhile content here, though. It’s just that it’s mostly for the GM. The Ten Thunders book is useful to all players, but it’s not worth buying this bundle solely for that title. Yeah, this one’s just for the GMs, and even then, I’d take a look and see if the adventures sound useful.
You can click here to visit the bundle page at Bundle of Holding.
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